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Shipmap.org

shipmap.org

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Re: Shipmap.org

#102

My son loves trains. There are a couple of state parks near me that have tracks running through them and I once tried to find something like this / flight tracker for trains and learned their security / obfuscation around that seems to be on the same level of submarines? Why?

The British rail system releases as open data(JSON over AMQP) all train movements down to indidvidual signal blocks You can view some of the the live maps here: https://www.opentraintimes.com/maps, but this is unique as far as I know.

I don't think it's really down to super-tight security as such, rather that there's no reason to release the data publically.

Ships and airplanes broadcast data because it's useful for collision avoidance and tracking. The international maritime and aerospace system is far too complicated and large that you could ever build a private network of every ship or plane operator sharing encrypted data, or that one company could set up receivers for the tracking data worldwide. A closed system wouldn't work.

Rail is both physically and legally a finite closed space. The network operator knows definitively where every train in their network is because they have sensors in the tracks. The network is responsible for preventing collisions, not the individual trains. They have contracts with every company which operates on their tracks and if these need their internal data they can get it. So there's simply no good reason why trains should be publically broadcasting their information, or why network operators would want to expose all their internal data.

And against the no positives there are negative sides - apart from a couple of famous cases I've not heard of it in Europe, but stealing from cargo trains seems to be big business in the US: https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2022-11-17/los-ange...

In the UK the open tracking data also brought complaints from freight companies who feared competitors would use it to analyse their movements, figure out which traffic flows were the most profitable and use it for commercial advantage.

Re: Shipmap.org

#103
It's beautiful, but... I'm confused by the role of the play button. Can somebody explain how it works? I click on it and seemingly random things happen.

Re: Shipmap.org

#104
Is it using the wrong projection for the map? A lot of the tracks don't line up with the ports or channels that they are obviously using. The ships that look like they are going to and from Southampton, England are too far west and a little too far north. The same applies to the Thames and also to those in Oslo fjord.

Re: Shipmap.org

#105
post #14

A lot of people have called out some interesting things - one thing that I notice is how the cold water ports shut down in the winter (in the northern hemisphere). It's one of those things I've always heard and known about, but to see it visually conceptualized (and the implications on economy and national interests) is very cool

Something that will change in the next century. I'm curious how that will affect shipping. I'm imagining it won't have much impact on container shipping but natural resources probably?

> Something that will change in the next century. I'm curious how that will affect shipping. I'm imagining it won't have much impact on container shipping

No, on the contrary! The effect on container shipping will be absolutely massive with the Northeast Passage opening up. It's going to cut thousands of miles off shipping routes, since its the much shorter route from American East Coast ports and the Euros to Asia.

Re: Shipmap.org

#106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is the piracy that is afflicting them That’s not what the phrase says. It says piracy is afflicting the waters. It’s describing the condition of the waters. How would you propose changing this wording?

Why not simply say “Somali piracy” since that it what is happening and the Somalis are doing as a feature of their nationhood, if one can call it that. The piracy is not a disease afflicting the Somalis, they are perpetrating it just like how a robber robs you, he is not afflicted with robbery against you. Where does that kind of nonsensical mentality even come from. I’m old enough to remember being taught to avoid t…

> Why not simply say “Somali piracy”

The audio is referencing geographical locations, so saying “Somali piracy” alone doesn’t provide a geographical location (since Somali piracy could take place anywhere).

So the quote would need to change to something like:

“[…] to the relative quiet of Somali piracy in Somalia’s waters”

…which is extremely clunky.

Can you suggest an acceptable version, that still does the job of referencing the geographical location?

Re: Shipmap.org

#107

Try this one. Real-time global view of all registered ships. You can click on any little triangle or type in a ship's name and see it's location: https://www.marinetraffic.com/en/ais/home/centerx:-37.3/cent...

It's not completely real-time unless you pay to get satellite tracking included. The free version only has data from shore based AIS scanners plus a few scanners placed on ships. So close to shore it's pretty accurate, but in the middle of the ocean you only get position and vessel type (unless there's a ship with an AIS scanner nearby).

Re: Shipmap.org

#108

This is very informative. How are the vessels tracked? Is this real-time tracking of specifically equipped vessels. Can any other vessels be tracked or only those with traditional maritime transponders? If real-time, it'd be cool to have vessel/point data be displayed upon hovering over with a mouse.

Ships over a certain size are obligated to report their position (and some other information) over AIS (similar to ADSB on airplanes. It's meant for other nearby ships and ports for navigational purposes. These are tracked from shore based scanners, scanners on ships and satellites. You can see partly real-time data on marinetraffic.com and vesselfinder.com

Re: Shipmap.org

#109
A similar but much more up-to-date and interactive version of this can be accessed via the Global Fishing Watch map: https://globalfishingwatch.org/map

Turn on the `Vessel presence` layer, which displays a vector-tiled view of all vessels up to a few days ago, not just fishing boats.

And something from my own blog which may be of interest: https://blog.datadesk.eco/p/sky-lapse-in-two-tone

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