This publication is categorised as a CSO Frontier Series Output. Particular care must be taken when interpreting the statistics in this release as it may use new methods which are under development and/or data sources which may be incomplete, for example new administrative data sources.
This is the first time the Central Statistics Office (CSO) has used the real-time Automatic Identification System (AIS) for shipping data in order to produce faster maritime indicators.
The number of ships arriving in Irish ports calculated from AIS shipping transponder data closely mirrors the number published in the CSO’s Statistics of Port Traffic data series based on administrative data.
Real-time AIS data accurately captures Irish shipping trends over time.
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Statistician's Comment
The Central Statistics Office (CSO) has today (03 October 2022) released a frontier publication that presents an application of Automatic Identification System’s (AIS) data to analyse port calls in Ireland.
Commenting on the release, Dr Nele van der Wielen, Statistician in the Transport Division, said: “The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for timelier data to inform policy and decision-making. For the CSO, ‘Big Data’, such as the AIS, represents an innovative opportunity to generate maritime statistics in close to real-time. The spatial and temporal features of AIS data also opens up the possibility of analysing ship movements in and out of Irish ports in greater detail. AIS-based analysis could potentially reduce the time lag between the reference period and publication of official port call statistics from three months to one week.”
Further commenting on the release, Dr Nele van der Wielen said: “Results indicate that port calls based on AIS data are very similar to published official statistics. Based on the administrative data provided by port authorities in 2021, a total of 11,552 vessels arrived in six main Irish ports: Dublin, Cork, Rosslare, Drogheda, Waterford and Bantry Bay. This number increased to 11,640 when using AIS data with the Boundary Crossing Method and to 11,804 when using the Stationary Marine Broadcast Method (see “Data Source, Methods and Quality”). While the AIS numbers are slightly higher than the administrative sources, the key advantage of these AIS-based statistics is that they track the overall trend very well and can be produced in real-time to provide early maritime estimates.”