Vessel Traffic in US Offshore Waters from Automatic Identification System

AIS data from the U.S. Coast Guard network provides real-time vessel location and characteristics within the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone. Records are filtered to a one-minute frequency and organized by month and Universal Transverse Mercator zone for coastal management use. The data is made available through a joint effort by NOAA and BOEM.

Use Cases

• Analyze vessel density patterns within the Exclusive Economic Zone using location broadcasts.
• Model ship traffic flows for navigation safety by examining temporal sequences of vessel positions.
• Support coastal management decisions by correlating vessel location data with environmental or jurisdictional zones.

Strengths

• Data is filtered to a consistent one-minute broadcast frequency for temporal analysis.
• Coverage is specific to the U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone, providing a defined geographic scope.
• Data is organized by month and UTM zone, facilitating spatiotemporal segmentation and management.

Limitations

• The specific volume of records (row count) and available data attributes (columns) are not disclosed.
• Data is subsetted and filtered from original Coast Guard records, which may exclude some vessel broadcasts.
• Reliance on terrestrial receiver networks may create coverage gaps in remote offshore areas.

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce.

Collection Method

Collected from the U.S. Coast Guard's national network of AIS receivers, filtered to one-minute frequency and subsetted for the EEZ.

Freshness

Data is described as real-time, with platform metadata indicating a recent update in December 2025.

Geography

U.S. Exclusive Economic Zone (offshore waters).