Year
2011
Abstract
Global trade data are collected worldwide and made available by national statistical services and dedicated data providers. JRC has carried out a support task to IAEA to identify main trade data sources and explore uses for safeguards. In this context a software tool has been developed in support to nuclear trade analysis. The tool, called The Big Table (TBT), allows IAEA’s analysts to search control lists, identify items of interest to trade-related case studies, and link these to technical documentation and descriptors needed to retrieve global trade data. A distinguishing trait of TBT is that it enables searching in an ‘inter-related way’ a collection of reference documents for export controls on nuclear and nuclear-related items. Reference documents include: regulatory documents, technical handbooks and the Harmonized System, the taxonomy of goods developed by the World Customs Organization and used by traders to declare exports and imports to customs. By inter-related search it is meant that semantically related items listed in different documents of TBT’s collection are put in correspondence by ad hoc correspondence tables. In this way, any document in the collection can be taken as starting point for a search, and retrieve complementary perspectives on items given other relevant documents. TBT can serve a variety of tasks and communities underpinning export controls, including the rating of items by licensing authorities and supporting commodity identification for customs controls.