Registration still open for the Building the Strategic Supply Chain Open Knowledge Network

#1725083: Registration still open for the Building the Strategic Supply Chain Open Knowledge Network - March 9-10, 2026

Description:	You are invited to join the Building the Strategic Supply Chain Open Knowledge Network workshop. This workshop will convene experts from academia, industry, and government to address the vision laid out in the OKN Roadmap, an Open Knowledge Network (OKN) to enable real-time visibility and resilience across the national supply chain. The workshop is motivated by recent disruptions—from pandemics to infrastructure failures to tariffs. These disruptions have exposed critical vulnerabilities in the U.S. supply chain that demand coordinated, data-informed responses that bridge the gap between siloed operations and system-wide visibility and yet be privacy preserving. The workshop will be structured around three concrete supply chain scenarios: water supply, manufacturing contracts and freight transportation (problem descriptions below). Problem Statements Achieving Water Intelligence: Despite the abundance of public data from agencies like USGS and NOAA, our current water systems are crippled by disconnected, non-interoperable data silos that prevent managers from effectively dealing with water supply crises. This panel seeks to develop a real-world operational protocol that can bridge between disparate knowledge representations and community action. The protocol will enable decentralized coordination among the local managers by giving them visibility into the complete, connected network of waterways essential for responding to floods, droughts, and chemical spills. Automating Manufacturing Supply Chain Contracts: Manufacturing lacks a clear, structured way to represent and exchange contracts that enables privacy preserving insights into how obligations depend on one another, and how failures in one area affect overall supply chain resilience. The panel will explore the requirements for a Contract Definition Language (CDL) that could solve this problem. The CDL will provide a high-level representation of contractual terms that are both human-interpretable and amenable to formal analysis. CDL will combine clear conceptual definitions, legal ontologies, and domain-specific vocabularies to reduce ambiguity and improve consistency across contexts. The goal of the panel is to bring together stakeholders interested in shaping the design of the CDL and eventually leveraging it in the context of their business. Solving the “Empty Mile” Problem in Transportation Supply Chain: The freight industry currently relies on carrier-by-carrier contracting and load assignment, leading to significant “empty miles” when trucks travel between destinations without a load. This inefficiency increases greenhouse gas emissions, prolongs travel time, and raises overall vehicle miles traveled. A new platform could enable decentralized reporting of available loads and facilitate cross-carrier coordination to help optimize load allocation and significantly reduce empty trips. Major barriers to building a cross-carrier load-sharing platform include the lack of standardized data formats, challenges integrating with carriers’ diverse systems, and concerns around data privacy, security, and competitive sensitivity. The panel will bring together stakeholders from logistics companies, department of transportation and computer science researchers to map out a design and execution plan to realize the envisioned platform. For each of these scenarios, we will assess the state of practice, and emerging challenges. We will use that information to formulate concrete project proposals to accelerate their solutions.
More info:	https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USNIST/bulletins/40a9631

Description:

You are invited to join the Building the Strategic Supply Chain Open Knowledge Network workshop. This workshop will convene experts from academia, industry, and government to address the vision laid out in the OKN Roadmap, an Open Knowledge Network (OKN) to enable real-time visibility and resilience across the national supply chain. The workshop is motivated by recent disruptions—from pandemics to infrastructure failures to tariffs.

These disruptions have exposed critical vulnerabilities in the U.S. supply chain that demand coordinated, data-informed responses that bridge the gap between siloed operations and system-wide visibility and yet be privacy preserving. The workshop will be structured around three concrete supply chain scenarios: water supply, manufacturing contracts and freight transportation (problem descriptions below).

Problem Statements

Achieving Water Intelligence: Despite the abundance of public data from agencies like USGS and NOAA, our current water systems are crippled by disconnected, non-interoperable data silos that prevent managers from effectively dealing with water supply crises. This panel seeks to develop a real-world operational protocol that can bridge between disparate knowledge representations and community action. The protocol will enable decentralized coordination among the local managers by giving them visibility into the complete, connected network of waterways essential for responding to floods, droughts, and chemical spills.

Automating Manufacturing Supply Chain Contracts: Manufacturing lacks a clear, structured way to represent and exchange contracts that enables privacy preserving insights into how obligations depend on one another, and how failures in one area affect overall supply chain resilience. The panel will explore the requirements for a Contract Definition Language (CDL) that could solve this problem. The CDL will provide a high-level representation of contractual terms that are both human-interpretable and amenable to formal analysis. CDL will combine clear conceptual definitions, legal ontologies, and domain-specific vocabularies to reduce ambiguity and improve consistency across contexts. The goal of the panel is to bring together stakeholders interested in shaping the design of the CDL and eventually leveraging it in the context of their business.

Solving the “Empty Mile” Problem in Transportation Supply Chain: The freight industry currently relies on carrier-by-carrier contracting and load assignment, leading to significant “empty miles” when trucks travel between destinations without a load. This inefficiency increases greenhouse gas emissions, prolongs travel time, and raises overall vehicle miles traveled. A new platform could enable decentralized reporting of available loads and facilitate cross-carrier coordination to help optimize load allocation and significantly reduce empty trips. Major barriers to building a cross-carrier load-sharing platform include the lack of standardized data formats, challenges integrating with carriers’ diverse systems, and concerns around data privacy, security, and competitive sensitivity. The panel will bring together stakeholders from logistics companies, department of transportation and computer science researchers to map out a design and execution plan to realize the envisioned platform.

For each of these scenarios, we will assess the state of practice, and emerging challenges. We will use that information to formulate concrete project proposals to accelerate their solutions.

More info:

https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USNIST/bulletins/40a9631

Date added	Feb. 20, 2026, 4:16 a.m.
Source	Gov Delivery
Subjects	PodCasts / Webcast / Webinar / eSummit / Virtual Event etc. Retail / Supply Chain Industry News
Venue	March 9, 2026, midnight - March 10, 2026, midnight