U.S. Vessel Traffic Data from Automatic Identification System, 2011

The 2011 United States Automatic Identification System Database contains vessel traffic data for planning purposes within U.S. coastal waters. It is composed of 204 self-contained File Geodatabases, each representing one month of data for a single UTM zone. The data was provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce.

Use Cases

• Model vessel traffic density and patterns based on broadcast point position reports.
• Analyze voyage-specific characteristics based on static data in the Voyage table.
• Study vessel-specific attributes and identification based on data in the Vessel table.
• Map data collection infrastructure based on the listed base stations.
• Perform spatiotemporal analysis of maritime movements based on the one-minute time step position reports.

Strengths

• Data is organized into 204 self-contained geodatabases for monthly and zonal analysis.
• Includes multiple related tables (Broadcast, Voyage, Vessel, BaseStations) with defined relationship classes.
• Position reports have been pre-filtered to a consistent one-minute time step.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data is from 2011; freshness should be verified for current applications.

Provenance

Source

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce

Collection Method

Collected via the Automatic Identification System (AIS) from base stations.

Time Range

2011

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-10 19:48:49.738645; freshness should be verified.

Geography

United States coastal waters, covering UTM zones 1-11 and 14-19.