Foreign Policy’s blog has a short post about observing Singapore’s port traffic through Google Earth. By looking at the images on this program, you can get a real sense of how bad the economic situation is. For Singapore, the visible sign is the decline in vessel movements. Using a special product called AIS Vessel Data, you can actually see how much port traffic has declined, which means bad news for Singapore’s economic outlook.
The world’s busiest port for container traffic, Singapore saw its year-over-year volume drop by 19.6 percent in January 2009, followed by a 19.8 percent drop in February. As of mid-March 2009, 11.3 percent of the world’s shipping capacity, sat idle, a record.
It is no surprise that Singapore’s economy is expected to shrink in 2009.
There is a lot to say about the economic conditions in Singapore, but that is not really the purpose of this post. I mainly wanted to show how you can see physical signs of the economic troubles using Google Earth’s technology. Prior to seeing this post, a buddy of mine in NYC was asking me a lot about the port situation. Although I had recently been near some of the major ports, it was hard to get a sense of how bad it was since I did not have a point of comparison before the downturn. Using the Vessel Data program, however, you can actually see the changes, which is really interesting.
