Maritime Intelligence - Worldmonitor

The Ships layer provides real-time vessel tracking and maritime domain awareness through AIS (Automatic Identification System) data, monitoring critical chokepoints, detecting anomalous vessel behavior, and streaming position updates over WebSocket connections.

Chokepoint Monitoring

The system monitors 13 strategic waterways where disruptions could impact global trade, powered by three data sources: IMF PortWatch (weekly vessel transit counts), AISStream (real-time 24h crossing counter), and CorridorRisk (risk intelligence).

Chokepoint	Strategic Importance
Strait of Hormuz	20% of global oil transits; Iran control
Suez Canal	Europe-Asia shipping; single point of failure
Strait of Malacca	Primary Asia-Pacific oil route
Bab el-Mandeb	Red Sea access; Yemen/Houthi activity
Panama Canal	Americas east-west transit
Taiwan Strait	Semiconductor supply chain; PLA activity
Cape of Good Hope	Suez bypass route for VLCCs
Strait of Gibraltar	Atlantic-Mediterranean gateway; NATO chokepoint
Bosporus Strait	Black Sea access; includes Dardanelles corridor; Montreux Convention
Korea Strait	Japan-Korea trade; busiest East Asia corridor
Dover Strait	World's busiest shipping lane
Kerch Strait	Russia-controlled; Ukraine grain via Azov restricted
Lombok Strait	Malacca bypass for large tankers

Each chokepoint card shows real-time transit counts (tanker vs cargo), week-over-week change, and an expandable 180-day time-series chart rendered with TradingView lightweight-charts.

Density Analysis

Vessel positions are aggregated into a 2-degree grid to calculate traffic density. Each cell tracks:

Current vessel count
Historical baseline (30-minute rolling window)
Change percentage from baseline

Density changes of +/-30% trigger alerts, indicating potential congestion, diversions, or blockades.

Dark Ship Detection

The system monitors for AIS gaps, vessels that stop transmitting their position. An AIS gap exceeding 60 minutes in monitored regions may indicate:

Sanctions evasion (ship-to-ship transfers)
Illegal fishing
Military activity
Equipment failure

Vessels reappearing after gaps are flagged for the duration of the session.

WebSocket Architecture

AIS data flows through a WebSocket relay for real-time updates without polling:

AISStream -> WebSocket Relay -> Browser
              (ws://relay)

The connection automatically reconnects on disconnection with a 30-second backoff. When the Ships layer is disabled, the WebSocket disconnects to conserve resources.

Railway Relay Architecture

Some APIs block requests from cloud providers (Vercel, AWS, Cloudflare Workers). A Railway relay server provides authenticated access:

Browser -> Railway Relay -> External APIs
           (Node.js)      (AIS, OpenSky, RSS)

Relay Functions:

Endpoint	Purpose	Authentication
`/` (WebSocket)	AIS vessel stream	AISStream API key
`/opensky`	Military aircraft	OAuth2 Bearer token
`/rss`	Blocked RSS feeds	None (user-agent spoofing)
`/health`	Status check	None

Environment Variables (Railway):

AISSTREAM_API_KEY - AIS data access
OPENSKY_CLIENT_ID - OAuth2 client ID
OPENSKY_CLIENT_SECRET - OAuth2 client secret

Why Railway?

Residential IP ranges (not blocked like cloud providers)
WebSocket support for persistent connections
Global edge deployment for low latency
Free tier sufficient for moderate traffic

The relay is stateless; it simply authenticates and proxies requests. All caching and processing happens client-side or in Vercel Edge Functions.

See also Finance Data - Chokepoints for disruption scoring methodology.