Maintaining the reliability of maritime transport is important as it plays an essential role in the world’s logistics. Shipping companies must also ensure the quality of liner service from the viewpoint of punctuality, as failure to take appropriate action against transport delays can lead to significant financial losses. This study quantitatively analyzes the behavior of containerships in response to global transport delays in 2021 caused by the COVID-19 pandemic using Automatic Identification System (AIS) data and port call history data. This study first comprehensively reveals the delay of containerships in 2021 by highlighting the increased variability in vessel arrival times, decreased handling capacities in specific ports, and increased navigation and anchorage times. Subsequently, this study clarifies how vessels recovered their schedule by increasing ship speeds or skipping some ports. We found vessel speeds susceptible depending on their delay in some specific voyages, such as long-distance cross-regional navigation.

Container transport is widely used in logistics, and understanding the movement patterns of container trailers can improve logistics efficiency. Despite the availability of vehicle GPS data, studies focusing on container trailers in port areas are still limited. This study uses ETC2.0 data to extract trailer trajectories that visited Sendai Port in northern Japan. This port is of moderate size, allowing for the collection of a substantial amount of data, yet not so extensive that it precludes detailed analysis of individual cases. Analysis of the stop points of the trailers entering the container terminal shows similar characteristics to those observed in bigger Japanese ports. Since detecting stops alone may not capture visits to locations relevant to understanding trailer mobility, this study proposes a method to detect even short visits to such places. This method enabled the characterization between trailers transporting empty containers and those carrying loaded containers to the container terminal by the locations visited before and after accessing the container terminal.