DataCutter - Positions to Port History

DataCutter is a Cloud-based service that translates vessel positions, typically provided by Automatic Identification System (AIS), into human-readable zone transitions, including port history.

One of the challenging aspects of building DataCutter was acquiring a sufficiently large dataset to test it. Fortunately the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) provides a free source of AIS data for the US region: coast.noaa.gov/htdata/CMSP/AISDataHandler/2020/index.html.

We also needed information about the ports in the US, which we found here: United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). We extracted the coordinates of each port and created polygons around them. The boundaries of the ports can be refined later, as we see the results of the DataCutter process.

Having acquired AIS and port data the next step was to wrap the port polygons in a zone hierarchy. This is required by DataCutter to improve the efficiency and performance of the indexing process. I created a simple zone structure using Google - My Maps.  This structure will be further refined as we see the indexing results.

Then we fed the processed AIS data, the zone structure (inc. ports) and the IMOs of the vessels of interest into DataCutter. Here's an map of vessel positions in DataCutter for June 2020.

Here are the zone transitions and the port history for one of the vessels, for the month of June 2020.

DataCutter calculates the zone and port transitions for the vessels and regions that you are interested in. It processes the vessel movements data in your Cloud environment. You can securely integrate DataCutter with your own systems. This capability is described in the visual below.

For more information please contact us on LinkedIn or via email info@sketchtocloud.com.