About the Project

Cruise ships and merchant ships move many thousands of passengers across the oceans. It is not only of interest in hazardous situations such as the current corona epidemic to gain an overview of the flows of people crossing national borders across the oceans. While for cruise ships it is easy to calculate how many passengers are on board a vessel, it is challenging to track the people who are crews on merchant ships. Currently, there is no tool or application for that purpose available. Only port authorities in whose port the ship is docked receive a report. Structured information would better prepare authorities to take measures ashore in good time so that people can be supplied or ships can be diverted to other ports.

Project Goal

The objective of SEAPEOPLE is to develop an application within an app container determining the number and spatial distribution of people at sea worldwide regardless of the ship type.

This enables authorities or service providers to plan supply capacities in advance in the event of a crisis. Such a representation can also form the basis for innovative business models in regular shipping, e.g., for the effective planning of logistics chains. The number of persons is also determined for ships in ports. Therefore, the application will also be important for tourism in the vicinity of ports due to the better planning.

Implementation

Knowledge of the number and type of active ships will be obtained by evaluating the “Automatic Identification System (AIS) data” that is mandatory for all ships. This data is accessible through FleetMon’s own global AIS network. The data must be filtered, structured, and processed to be used for the planned application. The flow of people is displayed by linking the AIS data with ship information from the company’s own databases and external data sources to be researched. Big data algorithms are used for the purpose of the project.