AIS Vessel Traffic Analysis of the Lower Cape Fear River from 2018 to 2020

Grace Riley

Abstract

A proper understanding of vessel traffic patterns and data is necessary for the research of vessel impacts on waterways and shorelines. This project presents the methods and graphs used for preliminary research of Lower Cape Fear River vessel analysis. The data within this project was obtained from MarineCadastre.gov, a collaboration of the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) and NOAA. Vessel traffic data was used from the Automatic Identification System (AIS) that is collected from vessels each day. For this project the data for the years 2018, 2019, and 2020 were used. Through the use of Python and Jupyter Notebook, the data was compiled and analyzed using pandas, matplotlib, and numpy. The emphasized categories within this research were vessel type, length, width, draft, and speed over ground. It was found that the primary vessel group was pleasure craft/sailing, the mean vessel length was 134.3 meters, the mean vessel width was 21.0 meters, the mean draft was 7.9 meters, the mean speed over ground was 25.2 knots.

Faculty Advisor: Zhangping Wei

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Riley_Analysis of Vessel Traffic_PowerPoint.pptx

Grace Riley

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Email: kgr6154@uncw.edu