Maritime transport systems are essential to human mobility. A vital part of the maritime transport systems is the accurate vessel route forecasting (VRF). However, accurate VRF is a challenging task due to the fact that maritime traffic conditions are complex and dynamic. Machine learning (ML) methods can leverage from the ”explosion” of vessel surveillance information in order to encourage, enable deeper digitalization in the shipping industries and tackle the VRF problem. In this paper we investigate some of the most popular ML methods to address the VRF problem and we present an overview of these methods through an experimental testbed based on real vessel surveillance data. This work results in introducing baseline ML models for VRF purposes.

Within the last years the shipping industry invest-ments continue to grow to improve maritime transport systems. A vital part of the maritime transport systems is the accurate Vessel Traffic Flow Forecasting (VTFF). In this paper, we approach the VTFF problem from two different perspectives: a) indirect - as a vessel route forecasting application via employing predicted vessels locations in the future, and b) direct - as a flow sequence forecasting problem. In both strategies, machine learning methods are employed because they can leverage from the massive vessel surveillance information to enable deeper digitalization in the shipping industry. This work performs an experimental comparative study between the two approaches over a real dataset from the maritime domain.