Satellite Data Measures Shipping Disruption Impact on Container Capacity
Current overview (not historical)
The St. Louis Fed reports that satellite AIS data measures container shipping capacity loss in U.S. imports. During the 2021-22 supply chain crisis, carriers increased vessel deployment on East and West Coast routes, but utilization dropped from pre-pandemic 89% to below 70%. Following Houthi attacks forcing routes around the Cape of Good Hope in 2023, Asia-to-U.S. East Coast route utilization fell by approximately 21 percentage points.
Written with AI from the reporting · updated 10/27/2026
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- 1Logistics observationOct 27, 00:00recorded Oct 27, 17:38single sourcerevised
用卫星数据测量航运中断对有效容量的影响
Read original source ↗ St. Louis Fed · On the EconomyReplay this moment in the explorerEvidence & revisions · 1 source records
- Subject：
- St. Louis Fed
- Action：
- 发布博客文章
- Object：
- 测量航运中断对有效容量的影响
- Occurred (fact side)：
- Oct 27, 00:00
- Published (valid side)：
- Oct 27, 17:30
- First seen (known side)：
- Oct 27, 17:38
Fact stationSingle source · one-sided claimRevisedCopy may have been revised later; time replay is bounded. Layer labels group reading only, not causation between layers.
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- St. Louis Fed · On the EconomyFirst-party sourceRelated fact: single sourceSource report revisedMeasuring Shipping Disruptions with Satellite Data
Report first recorded Oct 27, 17:38
Using satellite vessel-tracking data from 2016 to early 2025, researchers constructed a common measure of shipping capacity loss for U.S.-bound container ships. During the 2021-22 supply chain crisis, utilization fell from 89% to below 70%. The Asia-to-U.S. West Coast route saw utilization drop from 92% to 53% by late 2021. In 2023, rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope due to Red Sea attacks reduced utilization on Asia-to-East Coast routes by about 21 percentage points. The study analyzed nearly 59,000 container-ship trips across six major routes to quantify the effective capacity lost to port congestion, canal bottlenecks, and geopolitical events.
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Event activity trend
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- Comparable peak
- 6Oct 28, 14:00
- 24h change
- -51%
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