Maneuvering and operational strategies using AIS data

Abstract

Automatic Identification System (AIS) is a transmitter information system mandatory for ma- rine traffic. Although it was originally designed to help vessels in avoiding collisions, AIS data can be used as a decision-making tool to assist harbor authorities. An exact knowledge of the temporal usage of the areas is relevant to harbor authorities to assist operational strategies, risk management, resource assignment and new infrastructures appraisal. Also, maneuvering patterns extracted from AIS data can be further used to estimate harbor basin bed morphodynamics as well as water quality estimations based on the fluxes generated by the maneuvers. The paper presents a preliminary methodology to obtain operational and maneuvering maps using decoded AIS messages with the objective of estimating a usage-index of the areas of the Port of Barcelona