U.S. Vessel Traffic Data from Automatic Identification System, 2013

The 2013 United States Automatic Identification System Database contains vessel traffic data for planning purposes within U.S. coastal waters. The database is composed of 216 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 the Vessel table.
• Map the coverage and location of data collection stations based on the BaseStations table.

Strengths

• Contains 216 self-contained File Geodatabases for comprehensive monthly and zonal organization.
• Broadcast point feature class contains position reports pre-filtered to a one-minute time step.
• Includes relationship classes linking broadcast points to vessel and voyage records.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count and total data size are unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Data is from 2013; 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

2013

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-10 19:48:19.499058; freshness should be verified

Geography

United States coastal waters, covering UTM zones 1-11 and 14-20.