API/PNR: Future Systems to Fight a Global Pandemic? Part 2

The border community are in the frontline of the fight against the current global pandemic, and will be in any future pandemic scenario, in the post Coronavirus world. So how can the border better serve as the first line of defence for countries?

Judging by the reaction to our first webinar dedicated to the potential use of API and PNR to fight the spread of a global pandemic. This is a subject for which we have clearly only just scratched the surface.

So, we have decided to hold a second webinar on the same subject.

As we all know, the API and PNR systems are primarily designed for air travel. Nor are these systems ready to become a post corona intermodal tack and trace system to help control the spread of deadly viruses.

But they are perhaps a good place to start!

We could wait for every nation to set up their own trusted traveller programmes, but that would take far too long. We already have international obligations to share data via UN resolutions 2396 (2017) and 2178 (2014). And we already have systems developed to do it.

It could be said that travelling to other people’s countries is a privilege, not a right.

Given agreed standards of data protection, if a host country wants to know if a visitor is currently healthy, where they will be staying for the first ten days of their trip and wants their mobile phone number, is that a fair exchange?

And if a future track and trace system based on API and PNR were introduced, shouldn’t it also be applied to other modes of transport? For instance, the UK alone had 18.4 million sea passengers make short international journeys in 2019 and the number of passengers travelling via the Channel Tunnel was over 21.5 million.

This webinar will discuss these questions and more, so join us for Part 2 of API / PNR – Future Systems to Fight a Global Pandemic.