Boat Traffic on Amsterdam's Canals

A Summer Day In Amsterdam's Canals is an animated map which visualizes a whole day of boat traffic on Amsterdam's canals. The map allows you to observe the different types of boats which navigate Amsterdam's canals and the ebb and flow of boat traffic over the course of a typical summer's day.

The interactive map of Amsterdam's canal traffic is a little hidden away. To view the map wait until the opening video has played to its end when a 'Go to Visualization' button will appear. Click on this button and you can view the interactive map. Once the map loads it can also be a little difficult to spot the 'play' button. A very small play and pause button can be found in the square menu (to the left of the map). If you press the play button you can watch as all the boat traffic from August 12th, 2017 is animated on the map.

As the day's boat traffic plays out on the map you can view the tracks of individual boats moving around the city's canals. The boats and tracks are color-coded on the map to show whether they are cargo or passenger boats. You can actually filter the map to only show the cargo or passenger boats on the map. If you stop the animation you can view a map showing the tracks of a whole week of boat traffic and a chart showing the number of boats in the canals by day of the week and hour of the day.

A Summer Day in Amsterdam's Canals uses data from MarineTraffic. MarineTraffic uses AIS data to show the live real-time position of ships around the world. Last year Alasdair Rae used data from MarineTraffic to map out the tracks and routes taken by different types of ships around the UK. In Watching the Ships Go By Alasdair created a series of maps to visualize the paths taken by different marine vessels in UK coastal waters. These maps show the different shipping routes taken by cargo ships, passenger ships, fishing boats, high speed craft, military vessels, tankers and recreational craft.