U.S. Vessel Traffic Data from Automatic Identification System, 2014

The 2014 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. It was provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Department of Commerce.

Use Cases

• Model vessel traffic density and patterns based on one-minute time step position reports.
• Analyze voyage-specific characteristics based on static data in the Voyage table.
• Study vessel-specific attributes and metadata based on data in the Vessel table.
• Map and correlate AIS data collection points based on the BaseStations table.

Strengths

• Covers the entire United States across 18 specified UTM zones.
• Contains 216 self-contained monthly geodatabases for structured analysis.
• Position reports are 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 2014; 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

2014

Freshness

Last updated 2026-04-10 19:48:18.135576; freshness should be verified

Geography

United States coastal waters