Port, terminal, and berth polygons are exactly as they sound. They are data files which provide latitude/longitude points to create a polygon, which provide the exact outlines of an entire port (Including it’s anchorages), individual terminals through to the specific berths that vessels will eventually call at.

These form the backbone of a number of different platform services, as it enables the creation of port events. By combining this data with AIS these companies can inform you when a vessel of interest has: Called into or left a port, arrived or left at its berth, is waiting at anchorage or is taking on bunker.

Effectively, this dataset enables companies to convert dots on a screen into actionable insight that can trigger business activities.

Benefits

Understanding port events is essential to the operations of most organisations involved in any kind of supply chain, but the mapping of ports, terminals, and berths is a vey time-consuming exercise. The ability to purchase these en-masse, is a significantly quicker process.

Port, terminal, and berth databases are also very difficult to verify without ‘boots on the ground’ to confirm how accurate they are. Having this already completed by such organisations provides more confidence in the datasets.

Drawbacks

Not all ports can be mapped, and if a company’s interests are in areas with low traffic, there is a chance that these ports will not have a high level of detail. While the suppliers are usually happy to add these ports upon request, this may take time.