Location of ships, boats and vessels in Australian - Craft Tracking System January - April 2023 (AMSA)

This dataset is an extract and collation of 4 months of data from the Craft Tracking System run by the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (AMSA). This dataset shows the location of cargo ships, fishing vessels, passenger ships, pilot vessels, sailing boats, tankers and other vessel types at 1 hour intervals.

The Craft Tracking System (CTS) and Mariweb are AMSA’s vessel traffic databases. They collect vessel traffic data from a variety of sources, including terrestrial and satellite shipborne Automatic Identification System (AIS) data sources.

This dataset has been built from AIS data extracted from CTS, and it contains vessel traffic data for January - April 2023. The dataset covers the extents of Australia’s Search and Rescue Region.

Each point within the dataset represents a vessel position report and is spatially and temporally defined by geographic coordinates and a Universal Time Coordinate (UTC) timestamp respectively.

This dataset is a derivative of the monthly Craft Tracking System data available from https://www.operations.amsa.gov.au/Spatial/DataServices/DigitalData. As such this record is not authoritative about the source data. If you have any queries about the Craft Tracking System data please contact AMSA.

Description of the data:

This data shows a high volume of cargo ships and tankers traveling between international destinations and the ports of Australia, as well as significant cargo traffic between domestic ports. These vessels tend to travel in straight lines along designated shipping lanes, or along paths that maximize their efficiency on route to their destination.

Fishing activities are prominent in international waters, particularly in the Indian Ocean, Coral Sea, and Arafura Seas. The tracking of fishing vessels drops dramatically at the boundary of the Australian Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Most domestic fishing activities appear to be closer to the Australian coast, often concentrating on the edge of the continental shelf. However, the data does not specifically indicate whether the vessels are domestic or international.

Western Australia exhibits a great deal of vessel activity associated with the oil and gas industry. Each of these platforms is serviced by tugboats and tankers. At large ports, dozens of cargo ships wait in grid patterns to transit into the port.

Shipping traffic in most of the Gulf of Carpentaria is relatively sparse, as the majority of cargo vessels travel from Torres Strait west into the Arafura Sea, bypassing the gulf. However, there is a noticeable concentration of fishing activity along the coast around Karumba and the Wellesley Islands, presumably associated with the prawning industry.

Along the Queensland coastline, vessel traffic is dominated by cargo ships, which travel in designated shipping areas between the Great Barrier Reef and the mainland. There are three passages through the reef off Hay Point (Hydrographers Passage), north of Townsville (Palm Passage), and off Cairns (Grafton Passage).

The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) region is frequented by pleasure crafts, sailing vessels, and passenger ships. Pleasure crafts mainly seem to visit the islands and outer reefs, while sailing vessels tend to stay within the GBR lagoon, traversing its length. Passenger ships ferry people to popular reef destinations such as reefs off the Whitsundays, Cairns, and Port Douglas, as well as Heron Island and Lady Musgrave Island. Many large passenger ships, presumably cruise vessels, travel between major ports and international destinations. These ships tend to travel 20 km further offshore than the majority of sailing boats.

eAtlas Processing:

The following is the processing that was applied to create this derivative dataset. This processing was functionally just a collation of 4 months of data, and a file format change (to GeoPackage) and a trimming of the length of the text attributes (which should not affect their values). Four months of data was used as this was the maximum practical limit of the rendering performance of QGIS and GeoServer.

1. The monthly CTS data was downloaded from https://www.operations.amsa.gov.au/Spatial/DataServices/DigitalData and unzipped.
This data was then loaded into QGIS.
2. The `Vector / Data Management Tools / Merge Vector Layers...` tool was used to combine the 4 months of data:
Input layers: cts_srr_04_2023_pt, cts_srr_03_2023_pt, cts_srr_02_2023_pt, cts_srr_01_2023_pt
Save to GeoPackage: AU_AMSA_Craft-tracking-system_Jan-Apr-2023
Layername: AU_AMSA_Craft-tracking-system_Jan-Apr-2023

3. To reduce the size of the dataset the text attributes were trimmed to the length needed to store the attribute data.
`Processing Toolbox > Vector table > Refactor fields`
Input layer: AU_AMSA_Craft-tracking-sytem_Jan-Apr-2023
Remove attributes: layer, path (these were created by the Merge Vector Layers tool)
Change:
Source Expression, Original Length, New Length
TYPE, 254, 80
SUBTYPE, 254, 20
TIMESTAMP, 50, 25
Refactored: AU_AMSA_Craft-tracking-system_Jan-Apr-2023_Trim.gpkg
Layer name: au_amsa_craft_tracking_system_jan_apr_2023

Data dictionary:

- CRAFT_ID: Double Unique identifier for each vessel
- LON: Double Longitude in decimal degrees
- LAT: Double Latitude in decimal degrees
- COURSE: Double Course over ground in decimal degrees
- SPEED: Double Speed over ground in knots
- TYPE: Text Vessel type
NULL
'Cargo ship - All'
'Cargo ship - Carrying DG, HS, or MP, IMO Hazard or pollutant category A'
'Cargo ship - Carrying DG, HS, or MP, IMO Hazard or pollutant category B'
'Cargo ship - Carrying DG, HS, or MP, IMO Hazard or pollutant category C'
'Cargo ship - Carrying DG, HS, or MP, IMO Hazard or pollutant category D'
'Cargo ship - No additional info'
'Cargo ship - Reserved 5'
'Cargo ship - Reserved 6'
'Cargo ship - Reserved 7'
'Cargo ship - Reserved 8'
'Engaged in diving operations'
'Engaged in dredging or underwater operations'
'Engaged in military operations'
'Fishing'
'HSC - All'
'HSC - No additional info'
'HSC - Reserved 7'
'Law enforcement'
'Local 56'
'Local 57'
'Medical transport'
'Other - All'
'Other - Carrying DG, HS, or MP, IMO Hazard or pollutant category A'
'Other - Carrying DG, HS, or MP, IMO Hazard or pollutant category B'
'Other - Carrying DG, HS, or MP, IMO Hazard or pollutant category C'
'Other - No additional info'
'Other - Reserved 5'
'Other - Reserved 6'
'Other - Reserved 7'
'Other - Reserved 8'
'Passenger ship - All'
'Passenger ship - Carrying DG, HS, or MP, IMO Hazard or pollutant category A'
'Passenger ship - Carrying DG, HS, or MP, IMO Hazard or pollutant category B'
'Passenger ship - Carrying DG, HS, or MP, IMO Hazard or pollutant category C'
'Passenger ship - Carrying DG, HS, or MP, IMO Hazard or pollutant category D'
'Passenger ship - No additional info'
'Passenger ship - Reserved 5'
'Passenger ship - Reserved 6'
'Passenger ship - Reserved 7'
'Pilot vessel'
'Pleasure craft'
'Port tender'
'Reserved'
'Reserved - All'
'Reserved - Carrying DG, HS, or MP, IMO Hazard or pollutant category B'
'Reserved - Carrying DG, HS, or MP, IMO Hazard or pollutant category C'
'Reserved - Reserved 6'
'Reserved - Reserved 7'
'Sailing'
'SAR'
'Ship according to RR Resolution No. 18 (Mob-83)'
'Tanker - All'
'Tanker - Carrying DG, HS, or MP, IMO Hazard or pollutant category A'
'Tanker - Carrying DG, HS, or MP, IMO Hazard or pollutant category B'
'Tanker - Carrying DG, HS, or MP, IMO Hazard or pollutant category C'
'Tanker - Carrying DG, HS, or MP, IMO Hazard or pollutant category D'
'Tanker - No additional info'
'Tanker - Reserved 5'
'Tanker - Reserved 6'
'Tanker - Reserved 7'
'Tanker - Reserved 8'
'Towing'
'Towing Long/Large'
'Tug'
'unknown code 0'
'unknown code 1'
'unknown code 100'
'unknown code 104'
'unknown code 106'
'unknown code 111'
'unknown code 117'
'unknown code 123'
'unknown code 125'
'unknown code 140'
'unknown code 150'
'unknown code 158'
'unknown code 2'
'unknown code 200'
'unknown code 207'
'unknown code 209'
'unknown code 223''unknown code 230'
'unknown code 253'
'unknown code 255'
'unknown code 4'
'unknown code 5'
'unknown code 6''unknown code 9'
'Vessel with anti-pollution facilities or equipment'
'WIG - All'
'WIG - Carrying DG, HS, or MP, IMO Hazard or pollutant category A'
'WIG - Carrying DG, HS, or MP, IMO Hazard or pollutant category B'
'WIG - Carrying DG, HS, or MP, IMO Hazard or pollutant category C'
'WIG - No additional info'
'WIG - Reserved 6'
'WIG - Reserved 7'
- SUBTYPE: Text Vessel sub-type
NULL
'Fishing Vessel'
'Powerboat'
- LENGTH: Short integer Vessel length in metres
- BEAM: Short integer Vessel beam in metres
- DRAUGHT: Double Draught of the vessel, in metres.
- TIMESTAMP: Text Vessel position report UTC timestamp in dd/mm/yyyy hh:mm:ss
AM/PM format

eAtlas notes:
Fishing vessels are encoded as, TYPE: Fishing or TYPE: NULL, SUBTYPE: Fishing Vessel or TYPE: unknown code X. A lot of the vessels with and unknown code appeared to be predominately fishing vessels based on their behaviour.

Location of the data:
This dataset is filed in the eAtlas enduring data repository at: data\\non-custodian\ongoing\AU_AMSA_Craft-tracking-system