in Research, Sponsoringby FleetMon HQThe goal of the student thesis was to conceptualize a data pipeline combining AIS data with environmental data measured by sensors to track the route of cargo and the conditions it has been exposed to.
We support students and researchers by offering access to the FleetMon API Suite and our extensive AIS Data Archive with historical vessel position and port call data. Read this guest article we received by Niklas Scherer, a master’s degree student of the University of Applied Sciences in Bingen, Germany.
The academic project investigates a correlation between specific weather conditions a vessel was exposed to and occurring cargo damage. AIS data and weather data were used to examine if certain weather conditions on maritime high-traffic lanes are likely to cause damage to freight in order to prevent damage by realistic forecasting.
Kiel, May 6th, 2021: On Thursday, the Institute for the World Economy presented a new, AI-based leading indicator for international trade based on real-time data from global container shipping. On the basis of up to 250,000 continuously collected data points from up to 200,000 position data and up to 50,000 additional data on inlets and outlets, supplied by FleetMon, the Kiel scientists offer continuous monitoring of imports and exports of the largest economies China, Europe, and the USA.
FleetMon supports ETH researchers to find the answer.
Fighting climate change demands action in all sectors. International shipping faces the challenge of long lifetimes of vessels compared to other modes of transportation. Decisions on energy carriers and propulsion technologies that are made now have a long-lasting impact on the emissions of the sector.
A research group at the Institute of Energy Technology at ETH Zürich led by Prof. Dr. Konstantinos Boulouchos developed a fleet turnover model for the shipping sector to estimate its future CO2 emissions up to 2050. Thereby, the CO2 emissions of existing ships and those of new ships entering the fleet yield yearly emission figures. However, up until recently, a missing puzzle piece for such models has been how long existing ships will actually still be in service. Missing or prohibitively expensive data has prevented analyses on this topic.
FleetMon supports students and research partners when it comes to providing AIS data for academic purposes. In 2020, a Ph.D. student from the Department of Engineering Science of the University of Oxford reached out to us to receive certain AIS data for a project on the decarbonization of crucial shipping routes.
Read a guest article provided by Professor René Bañares-Alcántara, Reader at the Department of Engineering Science, University of Oxford.
In January 2020, we announced on our blog that we support Steffen Krones, a German film producer, and his project team who reached out to FleetMon seeking a sponsoring partner. They planned to produce a documentary called “Flaschenpost aus Dresden”, covering the question:
Is it possible that trash produces in Germany moves all the way along German rivers ending up in the North Sea or even in the Arctic Ocean to pollute the coast of the Lofoten?
To get answers they built buoys equipped with GPS devices and tracked the buoys’ journey to understand and visualize the influence of human behavior on our world.
“Flaschenpost aus Dresden” is the latest documentary film project of Steffen Krones
2020 has passed quickly and we asked the project team for an update on their documentary project.
“We can’t wait to travel after those GPS drifters and finish the film production.”
At the beginning of 2021, the COVID-19 pandemic has claimed over two Million lives and continues to spread throughout the world. While the health crisis grew, the virus also infected economies and supply chains. Official statistics in developed countries such as Germany capture well the impact of lockdown measures on retail sales or disruption in global trade on national imports.
These official statistics, however, tend to be published with a time lag of several months and even longer for developing countries in the global South. To provide policymakers with more recent information on economic activity, the Kiel Institute for the World Economy (IfW Kiel) published the Corona Data Monitor in 2020 using unconventional, but high-frequent data. For instance, economist Vincent Stamer contributes to the data monitor by analyzing daily API data from FleetMon. Comparing historic ship activity in the Red Sea and the Suez Canal to today’s activity measures the impact of the Corona crisis on the key East Asia – Europe trade route. For more information, please visit the Corona Crisis Data Monitor on the website of the IfW Kiel.
Figure 1: Daily Freight Capacity, Red Sea, January 2020 until January 2021, source: IfW Kiel
In a recent study sponsored by the German Federal Foreign Office, a project team of the Kiel Institute replicated the concept of the Data Monitor and applied it to various data sources on developing countries. To measure the impact of the pandemic on countries in the global South, the authors used data on nitrogen gas emissions, light emissions, and flight arrivals, as well as AIS data on container ships provided by FleetMon.
Researchers at ETH Zurich provide new insights on the emission reduction potential of shore-side electricity using AIS data from FleetMon.
Port of Felixstowe and high-traffic vessel lanes using FleetMon Explorer
The urgency for climate action expressed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) demands a rapid market uptake of CO2 reduction measures in all sectors. For international shipping, the European Commission has frequently emphasized the important role of providing shore-side electricity to ships at berth, being a rather simple way of reducing CO2 emissions of ships, but also due to considerable co-benefits: Local air pollution in sea ports is primarily caused by emissions of ships at berth and poses a severe threat for premature mortality on the local residents.
Selling maritime data is our business. Know more about why we decided to provide port call data to German authorities and research institutes at no costs.
In October 2019 a German producer and environmental activist turned to us in need of support for a documentary project. Together with his team, he examines if trash of German rivers could contribute to coastal pollution of the Lofoten, a group of islands in the north of Norway. The idea is to build buoys equipped with GPS devices and track their journey to demonstrate the flow of German plastics.
FleetMon values curiosity and ingenuity! We support the project team by sponsoring the first batch of GPS devices for free.
The devices will be placed inside customized buoys. The buoys are made of sustainable or recycled material to start their journey in the major German river Elbe to simulate how German trash might move.
