Vessel traffic data, or Automatic Identification System (AIS) data, are collected by the U.S. Coast Guard through an onboard navigation safety device that transmits and monitors the location and characteristics of vessels in U.S. and international waters in real time. The Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM), the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), and the U.S. Coast Guard Navigation Center have worked jointly to repurpose and make available some of the most important records from the U.S. Coast Guard’s national network of AIS receivers. Information such as location, time, vessel type, speed, length, beam, and draft have been extracted from the raw data and prepared for analyses in desktop GIS software.

Get Data

These AIS data can be accessed through the AccessAIS tool or through the download links below. Please see the FAQ page for more information about AIS data. Note that MarineCadastre.gov does not have access to LIVE AIS data feeds, or more recent data than what is provided on this webpage.

Explore Data with AccessAIS

View and download by user-defined dates and areas.

Launch AccessAIS

AccessAIS tool screenshot

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Download by Data Set

Download by predefined dates and areas.

The data available below contains records for U.S. coastal waters for calendar years 2009 through 2023. Records for 2009 through 2014 are filtered to one minute and formatted in zipped, monthly files by Universal Transverse Mercator (UTM) zone. View the index map of UTM zones for an area of interest. For records from 2010 through 2014, ship name and call sign fields have been removed, and the MMSI (Maritime Mobile Service Identity) field has been encrypted at the request of the U.S. Coast Guard. These data are stored and distributed in the file geodatabase format.

Beginning in 2015, the Authoritative Vessel Identification Service (AVIS) was used to correct select fields that had either missing or outdated values, and the practice of encrypting the MMSI was stopped. These data are stored and distributed in comma separated variable (CSV) format. Records for 2015 through 2023 are filtered to one minute and formatted in zipped, daily files for all U.S. coastal waters. Information on all AIS point data can be found within the Point Data Summary document.

Users can now download a full year of AIS data using the links below.

Transit Counts
Metadata

For assistance, please email us at MarineCadastre@noaa.gov.

The Tools

The tools below are designed to help analysts process the data and derive products that improve offshore site analysis, use-conflict studies, and the understanding of marine transportation patterns.

AccessAIS

This web-based tool enables users to interactively download U.S. vessel traffic data across user-defined geographies and time periods. It also provides quick visualization of vessel traffic densities and patterns using underlying map services derived from the same point data that are available for download via the application.

Launch

ArcGIS Pro Track Builder Pro 1.0

This toolbox converts vessel positions into track lines and track lines into a grid. Each grid cell reports the total number of times a vessel has passed through it. Input data can be in either a CSV format or an existing file geodatabase.

Technical Specifications

  1. Requires ArcGIS Pro 1.2.x or above with a Spatial Analyst license
  2. Data must be in point format and include a date-time and unique identifier fields

Download

Help Documents

ArcGIS Desktop Track Builder 3.1

This toolbox reads and converts a collection of point features into a track line. Input data can be either in a CSV format or in an existing file geodatabase. This tool is especially useful for processing Automatic Identification System (AIS) data from the MarineCadastre.gov. For users with very large files, a command-line tool is also included that is optimized for 64-bit processing. AIS track lines can be used to generate maps of vessel traffic for transportation analysis and coastal and ocean planning.

Technical Specifications

  1. Requires ArcGIS 10.1 or later
  2. Data must be in point format and include a date-time and unique identifier fields
  3. While this tool can be used with any data set that fits the above requirement, it was developed to be used with the Automatic Identification System (AIS) data published by MarineCadastre.gov

Download

Acknowledgments

U.S. Coast Guard Navigation Center

 

Resources