Data Enhancement and Standardization Using AIS and GIS: A Public and Private Effort

Over time, a number of federal agencies have been involved in collecting and maintaining marine navigation data. Similarly, private industry involved in maritime commerce also collects and maintains its own proprietary navigation-related database. In several cases, data collected by federal agencies and industry is incomplete, and over time these data sets become inconsistent and often unreliable. In addition, operational inefficiencies arise when private industry data are shared between different owners, operators, and service providers. Most federal agencies also face similar issues of incompatibility and incompleteness of marine navigation data. To address these problems, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has initiated an effort to standardize and enhance navigation and maritime data across selected government agencies through the Federal Initiative for Navigation Data Enhancement (FINDE). On the private industry side, the Corps has been involved in the Federal-Industry Logistics Standardization (FILS) initiative. In parallel, the Corps has initiated an effort to enhance the data and make them even more accurate by using the Automatic Identification System (AIS). This paper documents these efforts and demonstrates how GIS technology has been incorporated to enhance data acquisition to detect vessel stops, particularly at docks and terminals.