11
years of vessel traffic data for US waters
Automatic Identification System (AIS) - Software Engineering and Data Processing
Since 2010, RPS has supported NOAA Office for Coastal Management (OCM) and the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) to provide the coastal planning, science, and engineering community with geographic data, tools, and methods to improve access to and analysis of vessel traffic data that is available through the United States Coast Guard’s Nationwide Automatic Identification System (AIS) data.
RPS has processed annual archives of AIS data for the United States starting from 2009, in a standardized and filtered Geographic Information System (GIS) compatible format. RPS has also developed and updated software to aid in the reading, processing, and analysis of AIS data.
Timeline
2010
RPS started the project.
2011
April 2011 - The first version of the AIS processing tools and 2009 AIS data
2012
June 2012 – Updated AIS processing tools and 2010 AIS Data
2012
October 2012 – First version of the AIS Track Builder and 2011 AIS Data
2013
December 2013 – Updated AIS processing tools
2014
May 2014 – Updated AIS Track Builder and AIS processing tools, 2012 AIS Data
2015
March 2015 – Updated the AIS Track Builder
2015
May 2015 – 2013 AIS Data, track line, and vessel density data products
2015
August 2015 – 2014 AIS Data, track line, and vessel density data products, AIS Change Detection tools
2018
September 2018 – Updated AIS processing tools and AIS Track Builder, developed the AIS Vessel Counter tool, 2015 – 2017 AIS Data, track line, and vessel density data products
2019
AIS Data, track line, and vessel density data products.
2020
This project is ongoing.
Key Details
Project Name
Automatic Identification System (AIS) - Software Engineering and Data Processing
Client
NOAA Office for Coastal Management (OCM), Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM)
Sectors
- Ports
- Oil and gas
- Renewables
- Security and safety
Locations
- Coastal continental United States, inland rivers, Alaska, Hawaii, and Guam
Services Provided
Software Development:
- Tools for data filtering, extraction, and conversion
- Tools for data visualization and analysis
- Tools to create data products
Data Processing:
- Annual AIS filtered data from 2009-2019 in various data formats
- Vessel trackline data products
- Vessel transit count and density products
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Solution
RPS has developed software that can read the raw AIS format, standardize the data, and filter the vessel position data to 1-minute time steps. This software loads the filtered data into a relational database that can facilitate rapid data queries, filtering, and extraction. Monthly AIS data products were prepared by UTM zone in various formats, for manageable data distribution allowing users to perform analysis on smaller subsets of data for a specific geography and time period of interest. RPS has also developed tools to prepare, and have prepared summarized data products that are ready for analysis, including individual vessel track lines and vessel density or transit counts for each major US ocean basin.
Project Statistics
15 >
Terabytes of raw AIS data processed
33 B
vessel position reports prepared
22 M
vessel track lines prepared