Vessel Density Maps from AIS Data in the Northwest Atlantic, 2013-2022

2019 AIS data was analyzed to produce yearly and monthly vessel density maps for the Northwest Atlantic, providing a pre-COVID-19 baseline of maritime traffic. Fisheries and Oceans Canada created these geospatial products, which were later extended to cover the years 2013 through 2022. The dataset includes combined maps for all vessel classes and separate yearly maps for each class.

Use Cases

• Modeling shipping traffic patterns for marine spatial planning based on vessel density maps.
• Analyzing temporal trends in maritime activity based on yearly and monthly density data from 2013-2022.
• Assessing vessel class-specific distributions for environmental or security risk analysis.
• Supporting maritime domain awareness and safety of life at sea decision-making based on AIS tracking data.

Strengths

• Covers a multi-year time series from 2013 through 2022.
• Includes both yearly and monthly aggregated vessel density maps.
• Provides separate yearly density maps for each vessel class.
• Data is provided in multiple geospatial formats (FGDB/GDB, ESRI REST, GEOTIF).

Limitations

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

Provenance

Source

Fisheries and Oceans Canada

Collection Method

Geographic information system (GIS) analysis of Automatic Identification System (AIS) data.

Time Range

2013 through 2022, with 2019 used as a pre-pandemic baseline.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-03-24 08:07:33.344900; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Northwest Atlantic