Re:DigitalGlobe: 30cm satellite imagery
by ChuckMcM on Friday March 13, 2015 @09:26PM
(#9201164)
Always fun to count containers to estimate economic activity. Or cranes/building changes. Would be a fun student project which would take a picture of the Port of Los Angeles or the Port of Oakland and return a number of estimated containers. Then run that over a year with once a week sampling across random days of the week.
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Those statistics are easily available for US ports.[1][2] Ship tracking data is available as well.[3]
Counting containers in ports is more of a measure of port congestion than traffic. Also, a lot of them are empties, which you can't see from orbit.
[1] http://www.portoflosangeles.org/maritime/stats.asp [2] http://www.portofoakland.com/maritime/containerstats.aspx [3] http://www.marinetraffic.com/
I have heard that some finance firms are already doing as much of that as possible to determine earnings announcements beforehand.
Hospital carpark occupancy rates is pretty useful.