Congestion of Ports#

We define two congestion indicators:

(1) Average Congestion Time (ACT), which is the average waiting time of a ship at the anchorage before it berths at the terminal,

(1)#\[\begin{align} \text{ACT} = \frac{\text{Total congestion time of this month}}{\text{Total number of ships visiting this port during this month}} \end{align}\]

(2) Average Congestion Rate (ACR), which is the ratio of ships that moor at anchorage before berthing at the terminal over the total number of ship visits at a port,

(2)#\[\begin{align} \text{ACR} = \frac{\text{Total number of ships suffering from congestion in this port during this month}}{\text{Total number of ships visiting this port during this month}} \end{align}\]

The related data can be downloaded by clicking the following links. This Excel file contains the monthly aggregated congestion indices of top container ports since 2017:

IMA-DBSCAN#

In the study of Bai et al. [1], the authors proposed an berth detection algorithm, which is called an iterative, multi-attribute DBSCAN (IMA-DBSCAN). The algorithm is applied to measure congestion at 20 major container ports in the world.

Congestion in Panama Canal#

Beginning in October 2023, rainfall near the Panama Canal was 41% less than usual, making it the driest month since the earliest registers. As a result of the El Niño phenomenon, water availability in the reservoir system has been reduced and the Panama Canal Authority has announced a reduction in the number of reservation slots, which will reduce the capacity of the canal and cause congestion [2].

We tracked the vessel positions around the Panama Canal from early July 2023 to the present (2023-11).

Visualization of Top Port Congestion#

Here, we plot the monthly congestion index for the top 47 container ports since 2017.

References#

1

Xiwen Bai, Zhongjun Ma, Yao Hou, Yiliang Li, and Dong Yang. A Data-Driven Iterative Multi-Attribute Clustering Algorithm and Its Application in Port Congestion Estimation. IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, pages 1–12, 2023. doi:10.1109/TITS.2023.3286477.

2

Panama Canal Authority. The driest month of October since 1950. URL: https://pancanal.com/en/the-driest-month-of-october-since-1950/ (visited on 2023-11-07).