Researchers at University College London (UCL) Energy Institute have revolutionised Automatic Identification System (AIS) data using the methodology they developed for the Third International Maritime Organization (IMO) Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Study 2014 to estimate ship emissions and display them via an interactive, online map.
Developed by UCL Energy Institute and London-based data visualisation and digital journalism studio Kiln, the map is based on hundreds of millions of individually recorded ship positions.
Taking data from five different ship types, container ships, tankers, dry bulk, gas bulk and vehicle carriers, the map plots 250 million data points to show the movements of the world’s commercial shipping fleet over the year 2012.
CO2 emissions were established by cross referencing the location and speed of the ships with ship characteristics such as engine type and hull measurements. Emissions from international shipping for 2012 were estimated to be 796 million tonnes CO2 which is more than the whole of the UK, Canada or Brazil emit in a year. This breaks down into 2.18 million tonnes per day or 90,868 tonnes CO2 per hour.
The map does not use a background and only focusses on ship movements but defines the coastlines and shows the most crucial shipping thoroughfares, shown to be the canals linking different bodies of waters, such as the Panama Canal and the Suez Canal which saw 17,000 transits in 2012 alone.
As there a range of ship types analysed by the software, the map is able to show the movement of tankers, for instance, which ship oil from large terminals in the Middle East or from offshore rigs in West Africa. It also illustrates dry bulk carriers moving aggregates, ores and coal from mines and quarries, many of which are found in Australia and Latin America. The map also shows that many of these raw materials are shipped to manufacturing regions to make finished goods which are themselves moved back across the ocean in container ships.
The project was funded by the European Climate Foundation.
To view the interactive map and explore the movements of the global fleet, please visit www.shipmap.org
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