Developing timely maritime statistics on vessel traffic at EU level
THE PROJECT
As the data world continues to transform, the European Statistical System (ESS) Innovation Agenda aims to meet the demand for timely and newly developed statistics. As part of the agenda, the new project aims to develop timely maritime statistics on vessel traffic (port calls), starting at EU level and later on at national level. This is achieved using the Automatic Identification System (AIS) data for maritime vessels of the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA). Using AIS data, the project aims at producing statistics under development regarding early estimates of the number of maritime vessels entering EU ports (port calls).
THE MOTIVATION
Several EU Member States have already successfully developed statistics on maritime transport based on AIS data. Eurostat aims to produce and disseminate early estimates of port calls at EU and also at national level with a help of a statistical method. The ESS quarterly statistics on port calls are produced around 1 year after the reference period of the data. Using AIS data, Eurostat aims to provide early estimates of port calls in around 3 weeks after the end of the quarterly reporting period. The use of a stable and single data source as the European Maritime Safety Agency would ensure comparability of the estimates at national level.
THE METHODOLOGY
In 2024, Eurostat and EMSA signed an agreement enabling Eurostat to regularly obtain aggregated and and anonymized AIS and other administrative vessel data. Using this data, the project:
• regularly produces early estimates of maritime vessel traffic;
• produces documentation on the used methodology;
• analyses the observed deviations;
• tests estimation methods.
In June 2024, Eurostat disseminated its first estimates at EU level of quarterly maritime vessel traffic, for the period 2015–2019, based on EMSA data. The ‘autoregressive integrated moving average model with exogenous variables’ (ARIMAX) method is used to combine the input data and estimate the statistics for the most recent quarter. The input data are the statistics of previous quarters, the recent AIS data, as well as other EMSA administrative data. The estimates of the EU aggregates by vessel type are currently regularly disseminated as statistics under development. Meanwhile, Eurostat set up a task force comprising eight Member States to discuss data quality and ways of improvement that would pave the way for disseminating estimates at country level.
MORE INFORMATION
Maritime vessel traffic estimates
News item: Monitoring port traffic
THE TEAM
- Eurostat
- European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA)
- Contact: ESTAT-TRANSPORT@ec.europa.eu
LAST UPDATE: March 2026
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