AIS UN Global Platform

AIS data is collected at several places around the world from land-based stations and satellites. Allowing for real-time geo-tracking and identification for equipped vessels, the AIS data promises to map and describe certain marine human activities. The automatic identification system (AIS) is a tracking system for ships, originally developed for collision avoidance. In the recent years, it is also used for analyses from various fields. The data is automatically transmitted every few seconds over very high frequency (VHF) radios from approximately 100,000 vessels worldwide.