Kpler has built a proprietary algorithm to identify and track vessel congestion across the globe. The benefit of using this methodology over port line ups is that you can view congestion for any port in the world in a matter of seconds!
Using the historical positions and behavior of the vessels, we have identified waiting areas for every port and mapped them as waiting zones. These areas are mapped using a set of criterion like:
Maximum/minimum distance from the port,
Maximum vessel speed in the waiting area
Minimum positions inside the waiting area
And other assumptions that we cannot disclose to protect our proprietary information.
The algorithm maps exact areas where the vessels wait before they go to the berths to load or discharge cargo. Existing berths are excluded from this mapping as berth operations run the risk of giving us false positives.
Please see below a sample of waiting zone for Port Ulsan in South Korea and Suez Canal.
Thanks to this mapping, every time a vessel comes into the waiting zone we start monitoring it to see if it's loaded or ballast, if it has called the relevant port/berth yet and how long it spent in the waiting zone. Applying these business logics results in what you see on the congestion time series.
Waiting time count starts when the vessel enters the waiting area and stops when it leaves it. If the vessel leaves the area only to re-enter, we restart the count.
Congestion is snapshot metric - its provides a view of vessels waiting at a given day and time.
Refresh rate: Congestion data is computed and refreshed every hour.
Count
Day : Count of all distinct vessels waiting that day
Week : Count of all distinct vessels waiting in the week
Monthly : Count of all distinct vessels waiting in the month
Duration
Daily : Sum(duration of each vessel) / count(distinct vessels) on the day
Weekly : Sum (Max duration of each vessel) / count(distinct vessels) in the week
Monthly : Sum (Max duration of each vessel)/count(distinct vessels) in the month
Deadweight
Day : Sum dwt of all distinct vessels waiting that day
Week : Sum dwt of all distinct vessels waiting in the week
Monthly : Sum dwt of all distinct vessels waiting in the month
Note that a vessel is only tagged as 'waiting' when information on the next port call is available to us. Our definition of congestion does not include other vessels that might be in the waiting zone like lay ups, open vessels looking for next business, distressed cargoes, permanent floaters, vessel waiting to cross canals, etc. However, you can still access waiting times of such vessels by checking the box "Include all vessels in the waiting zone" as shown below.
Available parameters table:
Locations | Vessels | Vessel classification |
Count/Duration/Deadweight | Include all vessels in waiting zone or canal | Engine |
Products | Number of waiting days | Split |
