This Publicly Available Specification specifies a representation of information associated with the surface (marine, highway, rail) transportation of cargo and personnel. It supports the following: definition of information required to be exchanged in the building and operation of transportation equipment throughout its life cycle (see Figure1); definition of information required to be exchanged in the commercial operation of transportation equipment and the movement of cargo (see Figure2). Figure1 Transportation equipment life cycle Figure2 Cargo transportation process This Publicly Available Specification identifies the information that may be exchanged in both the production and operation of the assets needed in the transportation process as well as the information needed in the commercial transportation process and the regulatory information relating to each. Asset procurement and operation, as well as commercial transactions, are needed to support international trade. Continuous exchange of information between the equipment operators and the commercial operators are part of the transportation process. The above diagrams show the various processes and stages involved with maritime and intermodal transportation requiring data exchange. This Publicly Available Specification is applicable to the implementation of databases and data warehouses that enable data sharing among the various participants in the transportation process. The purpose of the Data Dictionary definitions is to allow the mapping of data that relates to the base definitions, with multiple occurrences of the data within industry and government databases.