Fast, inspectable maritime route planning across a global port catalog.
OceanRoute helps analysts, researchers, and planners compare hypothetical maritime routes between named ports. Every result includes the route geometry, distance, endpoint access quality, confidence, modeled chokepoints, and source lineage used by the calculation.
Open the live OceanRoute preview
- Search 5,166 ports by name, country, or LOCODE.
- Select route endpoints from the map or keyboard-accessible search controls.
- Calculate deterministic shortest routes over global ocean topology.
- Exclude Suez and calculate a Cape of Good Hope alternative where available.
- Inspect port authority, graph-access distance, source freshness, and evidence type before selection.
- Display EuRIS inland fairways and NOAA maintained-channel references at coastal zoom.
- Preserve canal centrelines, fairway geometry, and antimeridian crossings.
- Surface endpoint uncertainty and unresolved data constraints with each route.
- Record the graph version, cost model, and source register behind every result.
- Run without live AIS or external map-service dependencies.
- Choose a departure port and destination.
- Review each port's source and connection to the routing graph.
- Apply a chokepoint exclusion when required.
- Calculate the route.
- Inspect distance, confidence, warnings, infrastructure, and evidence lineage.
Route controls stay compact while the map retains the primary analytical view. The same endpoint actions are available from port markers and search controls.
| Result | Detail |
|---|---|
| Route geometry | Navigable GeoJSON split correctly at the antimeridian |
| Distance | Geodesic distance in nautical miles |
| Route label | Modeled passage or open-ocean alternative |
| Endpoint access | Connector distance to validated topology |
| Confidence | State derived from access quality and route warnings |
| Chokepoints | Modeled canals and channels traversed by the route |
| Evidence | Source family, version, checksum, role, and available source date |
| Reproducibility | Graph version and cost-model identifier |
| Measure | Current value |
|---|---|
| Port records | 5,166 |
| Ports connected to the routing graph | 4,531 |
| Ports within the 25 km access threshold | 3,235 |
| Ports outside validated topology | 635 |
| Global graph nodes | 1,706,031 |
| Directed graph edges | 8,517,040 |
| Active EuRIS fairways | 6,891 |
| Validated EuRIS-ocean gateways | 149 |
| NOAA maintained-channel references | 11,260 |
| NGA Pub. 151 validation pairs | 50 |
| Median absolute distance error | 1.38% |
Ports outside validated topology remain visible as infrastructure records. The interface disables them as route endpoints and states the coverage limitation. Ports connected beyond the confidence threshold remain selectable with a reduced-confidence warning.
OceanRoute distinguishes observed infrastructure, source-derived topology, computed graph access, and unresolved fields. Map interactions expose the basis for a route decision before calculation.
| Map layer | Role |
|---|---|
| Port infrastructure | Searchable endpoints with source and access state |
| Computed route | Selected minimum-cost route geometry |
| Traversed channels | Explicit canal and chokepoint geometry |
| EuRIS fairways | Authority-derived European inland topology |
| NOAA channels | Maintained-channel reference polygons for the United States |
| Coastline | Progressive global land context |
OceanRoute combines sources according to their evidential role. Source identity is preserved through normalization, graph construction, route calculation, and display.
| Source | Product role |
|---|---|
| NGA World Port Index | Global port identity and physical infrastructure |
| IMF PortWatch | Global port locations and aggregate activity context |
| EuRIS Inland Fairway Graph | Source-derived European inland fairways |
| NOAA ENC Direct | U.S. maintained-channel reference polygons |
| Global land mask | Ocean and land classification |
| Curated chokepoints | Explicit geometry for selected global passages |
| NGA Publication 151 | Independent route-distance validation |
flowchart LR
Select[Select two ports] --> Access[Resolve graph access]
Access --> Policy[Apply route policy]
Policy --> Search[Calculate shortest path]
Search --> Geometry[Reconstruct route geometry]
Geometry --> Verify[Verify land and provenance]
Verify --> Result[Display route and evidence]
The active objective minimizes positive geodesic edge distance. Hard route policy is applied before search. Ocean edges, explicit chokepoints, regional fairways, and validated gateways carry separate topology classes so inland geometry cannot become an unsupported long-haul shortcut.
Open-ocean resolution stays coarse enough for fast global search. Detailed source-backed geometry is used around ports, approaches, fairways, and canals. This hierarchy concentrates graph detail where physical infrastructure changes the route.
- Calm, compact visual hierarchy suitable for long inspection sessions.
- Square controls, restrained color, and semantic state instead of decorative effects.
- Visible uncertainty, freshness, evidence type, and route limitations.
- Keyboard port selection, pointer actions, ARIA relationships, live route status, focus indicators, and reduced-motion support.
- Stable route rendering with request cancellation and stale-response guards.
- Progressive coastline loading and deferred WebGL map initialization.
Current measured in-process route latency is 272.7 ms at p50 and 359.6 ms at p95 across 21 representative routes on an Apple M4 Pro. Lighthouse measured 90 mobile performance, 100 desktop performance, and 100 accessibility in both profiles.
- Compare Suez and Cape alternatives for a long-haul route.
- Check whether a named port has validated graph access.
- Inspect which source supports a port or fairway.
- Review endpoint access distance before accepting a result.
- Study how regional inland topology connects with the global ocean graph.
- Benchmark deterministic routes against published reference distances.
- Report topology and source gaps visible in the current coverage.
OceanRoute is available as a public preview at labs.jamessawyer.co.uk/oceanroute. The current release supports hypothetical route research and planning. Vessel dimensions, under-keel clearance, tides, weather, currents, congestion, fuel, emissions, and ETA are outside the active route objective.
Operational navigation requires official charts, current notices, vessel constraints, local authority instructions, and qualified review.
Use GitHub Issues for source suggestions and coverage reports.
This public repository contains the OceanRoute product overview and product screenshots. The routing engine, graph compiler, normalized datasets, deployment configuration, tests, and runtime artifacts are maintained privately and are not distributed here. Cloning this repository provides the showcase materials; it does not provide a runnable OceanRoute installation.