Evaluating Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on China's Container Ports Based on AIS Big Data

Abstract

To quantitatively analyse the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on China's container ports, the berthing ships are mainly investigated by the big data of Automatic Identification System (AIS). First, the methods of AIS data acquisition, cleaning and statistical analysis are introduced. Then the sample ports of Shanghai, Ningbo-Zhoushan and Tianjin are selected, and the monthly ratios of key indicators such as the number of berthing ships and berthing time are calculated by AIS analysis system. Finally, the numerical results show that although the COVID-19 epidemic does not significantly affect the number of container ships arriving at China's ports, it has a significant impact on the average berthing time of container ships.