Marine

The Suez Canal, built in 1869, is an important naval communication route between Europe and Asia, as it connects the Mediterranean Sea with the Red Sea and avoids the circumnavigation of Africa for many sea routes. It is 190 km long and 205 metres wide, with a maximum depth of 24 metres. The canal allows ships to pass through only in one direction at a time, with the exception of a 35 km lane opened in 2015 that allows traffic in both directions. Approximately 12% of global trade and 30% of containers cross this canal.

In those crazy days for the world’s markets, information on what was happening in and around the canal (the north access in Port Said, and to the south, near Suez) were crucial to understanding this unique situation. We produced a series of maps, based on radar images and in the visible spectrum  to quantify the number of ships affected by the blockade. This type of data were strategic to calculate time estimates of recovery actions for coming back to normal activity of the canal, which already normally operates at levels close to maximum possible capacity.

The blockade of such an important communication route is estimated to have caused a delay in the delivery of goods worth USD 10 billion per day to global trade, taking into account both the ships blocked in the canal and those waiting at the canal access. Some insurance companies estimated, based on their own analyses, that the economic loss was between $6 and $10 billion per week. The goods in the ships blocked in the canal alone were worth about $8.1 billion, according to LLoyd’s List.