Times of Ships in Container Ports: AIS Data for Maritime Transport and Ports Applications

In the context of a global trade, ports are critical nodes in the supply chain. For such reason, monitoring operations have a relevant role for both shipping companies and authorities. In particular, the time of ships in ports affects not only the performance of the ship but also the supply chain as a whole. So, it can be considered as an indicator of competition in the international trade challenge. Disaggregated and aggregated data related to different maritime activities can be used to evaluate this time. Thus, this study focuses on the innovation enabled by the introduction of automatic identification systems (AIS) and the use of data delivered by on board devices. AIS data provide information on the position of a ship allowing to analyze the activities of the ship within a port (e.g., the stop times). This paper aims to provide some general examples, taken from the literature, on the use of this type of data. From the analysis emerged that AIS data, since their introduction, have used for several scopes. Those can be broadly resumed into five different categories, referring to safety and security, environmental issues, route planning and shipping operations, data fusion and economical performances for both ports and vessels company strategies.