Technical Definition

This is a draft (alpha) standard. Please contact us with questions or feedback. We are especially keen to hear from individuals and organisations interested in moving this standard forward.

Options

The standard is intended to be flexible enough to cover one or more of the following data sets:

• Definition of specific reuse cycles
• Description of the types of reusable assets (including physical properties)
• Description of the “state” of individual reusable assets (e.g. packaging) at any point in time
• Describing the detailed “history” of individual reusable assets across any time period

Data for individual reusable items: Digital Passports

A Digital Passport is the digital vehicle for storing data that has been captured in a standardised way, i.e. via a data standard. Think of it like your own passport collecting location information about you as you travel, but instead of representing a person, a Digital Passport represents an individual piece of packaging and its journey.

This Standard includes two optional ways to represent Digital Passports. Users of the Standard may choose to include one or both of these, or to exclude the Passport completely (only including reuse cycles and maybe asset types).

1. Passport: this represents the “state” of the individual reusable item at a specific point in time. Think of this like using the Passport to identify in which country a person is currently locationed and how many times they have been though a different country. Although, rather than country, the Digital Passport summary for a reusable item will include information like how many times it has been reused and at what stage in the reuse cycle is it now.

2. Passport History: This is the detailed history of every step in the reuse cycle that each individual reusable asset has been through.

Validation

This standard utilises the JSON Schema Draft 7 mechanism to validate records being exchanged. JSON Schema is an IETF proposed standard for validating the formatting of a received JSON data.

JSON is the de facto standard for exchanging data over the web.

JSON Schema allows the structure of JSON documents to be described and documented and allows data to be validated against the schema.

Field Types

When referenced in the standard, field types refer to the following data types.

Field Type	Description
String	Alphanumeric data, appropriately escaped and encoded for inclusion in a JSON document.
Number	Numeric value, with either zero or two decimal points (eg: 12.20 or 7.00).
List	Alphanumeric string data, limited to specific acceptable values. The acceptable values are defined in the relevant internal code list or in external standards or recognised code lists.
UUID	A globally unique identification string using “RFC 4122” (https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4122.txt, see also http://guid.one/).
Numeric	A numeric value, either as an integer or a floating point number.
DateTime	An RFC 3339 compliant date string, including date, time, and time zone.
URL	A String, representing a valid URL including protocol, host, and if applicable, a path and query string.
Boolean	A boolean string of either true, or false.
Object	A valid JSON object, representing a collection of additional values that are grouped together.
Array	A valid JSON array, representing a collection of objects.

Structure

Fields

Field Name	Data Type	Required	Description
org	Object	Yes	The single organisation responsible for this reuse dataset
date	DateTime	Yes	When this data was compiled
cycles	Array	Yes	Defines the reuse cycle(s). Array of cycle objects
asset_types	Array	No	Describes the types of physical reusable assets (eg packaging) that are moving through the reuse cycles. Array of asset_type objects. Required if either passport or passport_history fields are present
date_range	Object	No	Optional date range for the Passport and Passport History data, as a Date Range object. Required if passport_history is present
passports	Array	No	Describes the state of all individual reusable assets at specific point in time (either date_range end or date). Array of passport objects
passport_history	Array	No	Record of all Activities of a reuse cycle that each individual reusable asset has been through, within date_range start and end dates. Array of passport_history objects

Schema

Date Range

Field Name	Data Type	Required	Description
start	DateTime	Yes	When the date range starts
end	DateTime	Yes	When the date range ends