Estimating vessel utilization in the drybulk freight market: the reliability of draught reports in AIS data feeds

The large volume of high-frequency data currently available for tracking the world fleet using the global Automated Identification System (AIS) offers great and largely untapped potential for the monitoring of global trade flows on a real-time basis. However, this requires ship positions to be complemented with information on the type and size of cargo onboard. While self-reported observations of a vessel’s draught provide an indirect way of measuring cargo size and loading condition, anecdotal evidence suggest that this information is not always accurately or timely reported by the crew. This paper investigates, for the first time, the reliability of the draught parameter reported over AIS for the capesize dry bulk sector of the freight market. We validate the AIS-reported draught data with information on the cargo type and cargo size from port agents’ lineup reports and fixtures data. The results confirm that AIS data alone is insufficient for the tracking of all cargo flows on a per-ship basis due to data quality concerns, however that a sample of the data appears to provide some information about average payload and utilization within a given ship type and size category.

Estimating vessel utilization in the drybulk freight market: the reliability of draught reports in AIS data feeds. ECONSHIP 2015 Greece.

Jia, H., Prakash, V., Smith, T.W.P. (2015)

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