Data mining large AIS data sets can reveal a lot of interesting observations. For example, using the bisecting k-means clustering algorithm, we could identify possibly interesting locations for traffic control infrastructure:

Here’s a little test we did… Wouldn’t it be nice to use supervised Machine Learning algorithms to automatically generate a suggested route for a vessel?

Using AIS data from a harbor as a training set, such an algorithm could suggest what route to follow for a particular vessel that’s navigating in the harbor.

We trained our algorithm with AIS data from the Port of Antwerp and show the suggested route in nAIS:

Route prediction in nAIS

Of course, these Expert Systems need to be tested extensively and probably complemented with additional correction routines.