Top 3 Things to Consider when Acquiring Data 

Your AIS Data is Foundational…

You depend upon AIS data as the foundation for many of your IT projects. As a chief information officer (CIO) or chief technology officer (CTO), AIS data is the lifeblood of understanding constantly evolving maritime trade flows and mapping the movements of vessels. The Panama Canal drought, Red Sea disruptions, Iran attack and hijackings, and the lifting and then reimposition of U.S. sanctions on Venezuela are reminders of how trade routes can change in the blink of an eye. 

This is just one aspect of AIS data’s utility. It is also critical for identifying hot spots to optimize fleet locations, as well as for fleet monitoring. It helps with tracking and predicting vessels’ arrival to ports, cargo tracking, and obtaining negotiable bills of lading (BoL). 

Your business requires data – to generate more leads and ensure compliance, by knowing exactly who you are doing business with. 

…But It’s a Cracked Foundation 

AIS data comes with a great deal of “noise” and effective operation involves taking the data, processing it, and producing actionable insights. Effective pattern recognition and adapting to changes is difficult without a good base of historical data, as noted in our executive brief on Windward’s AI technology, but obtaining ten years of historical AIS data costs millions of dollars. 

And working with less than that puts you at risk of not having sufficient data to optimally train and refine the AI data models that have become mandatory for the complex maritime ecosystem. 

The sea of data generated in today’s digital ecosystem makes it impossible to see through the noise and quickly overwhelms available resources  – there are hundreds of millions of raw AIS messages transmitted daily! Simplification increases the accuracy of vessel movement mapping and makes it possible to process the massive amounts of data..

Sharing data with other teams and making strategic decisions in real-time is also extremely difficult without a large base of fused and clean data.  

The Right Approach

Data-acquiring stakeholders such as CIOs and CTOs should look for a vendor that cleans, fuses, and simplifies the raw AIS data, so that the noise is eliminated and only relevant data remains. Of the 150 million raw AIS daily blips Windward detects, 85 million are fused and another 45 million are discarded. This leaves you with 90% less data to process! 

Multiple data sources, activities for any vessel in the world fleet, and 24/7 global coverage are also must-haves. 

Three Important Considerations when Acquiring Data 

1. Actionable and accurate data – as noted above, the raw AIS data should be cleaned, fused, and simplified, so that the noise is eliminated and only relevant data remains. Obtaining access to only the most relevant and accurate information means you can start working immediately, saving you processing time and resources. This includes reduced model-building times, which leads to optimized processes. 
2. Multiple sources – maritime organizations have to diversify if they want more than a partial picture. Utilizing multiple sources for data means not becoming over-reliant on any one source.  
3. 24/7 global coverage – staying on top of what is happening at sea means you need to have full coverage of as many areas as possible and visibility into activities for every  vessel in the world fleet

Windward Can Help! 

Data should be the basis for quickly understanding vessel movements, not piecing together a puzzle. 

Instead of buying raw data and having to process, clean, and make sense of it, Windward can do the heavy lifting for you. You immediately progress from raw AIS data to visualized vessel movements and customized alerts.

Our Windward Activity Layer is the next step. It’s a semantic layer of calculated maritime events, powered by a machine-learning model that constantly improves precision and highlights anomalies, including ETA changes, destination changes, ID and location tampering, drifting, port calls and much, much more. 

You can buy the processed data from this layer and build your own models from it, or get access to Windward’s patented AI models. 

Windward’s technology will grant you actionable visibility into changing trade flows and deceptive shipping practices. To put it in your language, we can help you save time and money. 

I Want to Save Time and Money