UK Traffic Separation Schemes and Deep Water Routes, Polygons for Navigational Charts

Polygons depicting Traffic Separation Schemes and Deep Water Routes around the UK and in the southern North Sea. The coordinates are approved by the UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency and most are approved by the International Maritime Organisation. This data is published by the United Kingdom Hydrographic Office and used for navigational charts.

Use Cases

• Visualizing maritime traffic lanes based on published polygon data.
• Integrating official shipping routes into marine navigation systems.
• Supporting marine spatial planning and safety analysis using approved scheme coordinates.
• Creating or updating navigational charts with standardized routeing measures.

Strengths

• Coordinates are approved by the UK's national competent authority, the Maritime and Coastguard Agency.
• All but one of the Traffic Separation Schemes have been approved by the International Maritime Organisation.
• Data is used to depict schemes on official UK Hydrographic Office navigational charts.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

United Kingdom Hydrographic Office

Collection Method

Coordinates are approved by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency and published as a Web Feature Service.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-07-08 13:33:10.923352; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Around the UK and in the southern North Sea.