AIS is a tool for vessel tracking where veslles have a transmitter on board that broadcasts

• data about the vessel,
• its course and position,
• and cargo

to a satellite or shore station reciever.

This data is being being transmitted in an ongoing basis, with the recieving stations/satellites gathering and agregrating data to provide critical information for maritime operations and safety managers.

Tranmissions arive at a wide variety of temporal resolutions, contain errors, and quickly add up to huge file taht are impossible for individuals to work with effectively. However, they must meet international standards so the files do not have a wide variety of formats.

Due to the immense size of raw AIS data sets, typically tens of billions of raw messages per year, and limitations of infrastructure and computing power, AIS data must currently be processed in small temporal or spatial subsets.

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