Watching Trade from Space: Measuring Maritime Trade Using Satellite Imagery — Yonggeun Jung

Speaker

Yonggeun Jung (University of Florida)

Abstract

This paper combines synthetic aperture radar imagery, nighttime lights, and port characteristics to measure port-level maritime trade using only publicly available data. We evaluate the framework at ports the model has never observed, training on United States ports and testing on European ports and then reversing the exercise, and find that the mapping transfers in both directions. Applying the framework to Russian ports after the 2022 sanctions, we find reallocation, with the Far East the only basin rising faster than the movement common to all Russian ports. The approach complements methods based on the Automatic Identification System: where transponders broadcast, AIS-based estimates track official statistics closely, and after the sanctions the radar keeps recording activity at western Russian ports that disappears from the AIS record, which is where dark shipping concentrates.

Room

only online – if interested, please send an Email to ktt@kielinstitut.de to receive the Seminar-Link to the seminar.

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