ABSTRACT
Portugal has a territory with approximately 91,760 km2, but has sovereignty or jurisdiction over a much larger area, of around 1720.560 km2, including inland waters, territorial sea and Exclusive Economic Zone.About 53% of the EU’s foreign commerce passes on waters under Portuguese jurisdiction, and around 60% of all Portuguese foreign trade is performed by sea. It is very important to know which areas have more maritime traffic and which type (manufactured good, energy transport, etc.) prevails along a given time period (Marinha Portuguesa, 2010). In this work we aim to estimate the number of distinct vessels that transit through several areas of interest. One example is the Economic Exclusive Zone for the Portuguese mainland. To do this, theAutomatic Identification System (AIS) plays a critical role to access information regarding the position of ships. The Portuguese Navy has implemented a network ofAIS stations in the mainland territory in order to efficiently cover all the areas in the Portuguese territorial waters and also the EEZ of the mainland. The data used in this work is provided from this network.
