Recently the maritime industry became aware of what has been stated in the media as “China’s terrestrial AIS data blackout”. Following two new data security laws in China, the reception of data from China became challenging. The new Data Security Law (DSL) and Personal Information Protection Law, both coming into effect on Nov 1, 2021, intend to increase government control over domestic and overseas companies collecting and exporting China’s data. Industry experts are concerned about how those changes might impact ocean supply chain visibility in China, especially taking into account the country’s leading role in global container shipping and coal and iron ore import. Besides, mainland China is home to six of the world’s ten largest container ports.
FleetMon collaborates with several Chinese companies and AIS Partners to receive terrestrial vessel position data from Chinese coastal waters. The new rules restrict foreign access to important data like vessels’ AIS signals collected in China without the government’s prior notice and approval. Some of our loyal AIS Partners and data sharers from China have paused transmitting data in fear of massive fines announced by the Chinese government in case of law violations.
Now, how severe is the impact of China’s new Data Security Laws on AIS coverage in the region?
In the age of ultrafast communication and GPS, it is hard to imagine that sailors once relied on the sky (i.e. constellations) to navigate their vessels in the high seas. However, not every sailor was a Viking, and this led to high chances of the ship landing somewhere it is not supposed to be (read: Christopher Columbus).
Fast forward to the 21st century, and we can do nothing but look back in awe at all the challenges sailors used to face back in the days. Since the 1990s, navigation in itself and shipping at large have undergone sea changes, thanks to the rampant evolution in AIS tech.
Now, humans have the rightful luxury of tracking their fleets on the seven seas with the help of a single click in real-time.
What was initially developed to function as a simple collision avoidance tool has now spiraled to form the heartbeat of global ship navigation? Yes, it is the Automatic Identification System (AIS) that we are talking about.
Currently, over half a million vessels actively use AIS for transmitting vessel data (mainly their location), which then gets collected by a receiver network deployed across the globe. FleetMon alone has a humongous database of over half a million vessels with users across 164 countries using FleetMon.com to track vessel movement.
Gone are the days when AIS used to be a tool for accident prevention. It is now a proven source of information for a wide variety of individuals ranging from maritime businesses that leverage its data to predict their growth, to researchers and analysts monitoring the supply chain.
As such, it is ever more important to know about AIS, at least the basics of it. The blog has been engineered for the same purpose, covering the 10 most important points about AIS and how you could benefit from it.
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.
