DataCube

Ships equipped with Automatic Identification System (AIS) equipment on-board transmit positional information every 2 seconds when moving and up to 3 minutes when anchored or moored. Originally introduced for navigational safety, AIS data can also be used as a source of information for monitoring trends in shipping activity. We collect and aggregate these messages to identify the number of ships that travel within a port bounding box and remain there for a series of transmissions, before travelling outside of the boundary again. The AIS messages also allow us to identify a subset of all ships as cargo and tanker ships. This dataset provides the number of daily visits for 16 of the UK's most significant freight ports by tonnage, and a sum of those visits as a UK total. The UK total is seasonally adjusted using the seasonal adjustment method TRAMO-SEATS modified to deal with higher frequency time series.