Freight Intelligence Data Sources & Methodology

Publication checks

A series is withheld until the exact dataset and its metadata have been reviewed. Public observations require an approved source record, complete attribution, a known license, no unresolved third-party restriction, and an individually approved observation.

We retain the exact official source URL, source dataset name, license URL, retrieval timestamp and source-file checksum where available.
We keep observation period separate from source publication date and our retrieval date.
Any conversion or transformation is disclosed; unchanged values are identified as unchanged.
Missing values are omitted or described as unavailable. We do not interpolate or silently smooth observations.
Country, port and country-pair data remain separate. Values from different units or methodology versions are not combined.

World Bank container port traffic

The candidate World Development Indicators series IS.SHP.GOOD.TU reports annual national container port traffic in twenty-foot equivalent units (TEUs). The World Bank’s indicator metadata identifies UNCTAD as the data provider and labels the series CC BY 4.0. The series is a country-level throughput total, not throughput for a named port and not a freight price.

Attribution: The World Bank: World Development Indicators, Container port traffic (TEU: 20 foot equivalent units). Data source: UNCTAD. Licensed under CC BY 4.0. Dataset-specific metadata and third-party conditions are checked before individual observations are published.

UNCTAD connectivity series

UNCTAD Data Hub materials state that reuse is allowed under CC BY 3.0 IGO with source attribution. UNCTAD documents table-level CSV export and bulk-file download; we do not rely on undocumented API endpoints. Country LSCI, port PLSCI and bilateral LSBCI remain separate datasets and are imported from their official tables.

Country LSCI and port PLSCI

Quarterly LSCI measures an economy’s position in the global liner-shipping network; monthly LSCI provides the corresponding monthly series. Quarterly PLSCI measures a named port’s position. The current quarterly indexes use six schedule-based components and were rebased so the global average in Q1 2023 equals 100; the monthly series uses its published M2 2023 = 100 reference. The 2026 release currently contains Q1–Q3 quarterly values and monthly values through September. Country records retain UN M49 identifiers; ports retain the UNCTAD port identifiers as published. Only selected markets are imported, with missing values left unavailable. These scores are relative connectivity indexes, not TEU throughput or freight rates.

Reference cadence of the monthly export. The official monthly LSCI bulk file is not sampled evenly: it publishes quarterly snapshots (February, May, August, November) from February 2006 to November 2022, then monthly values from January 2023 — 113 published periods in total, not the roughly 245 months a reader would expect from a series labelled “monthly since 2006”. DDP Atlas shows the coverage the source actually publishes, states the cadence on the chart page, and does not interpolate, back-fill or synthesize the months the source never published.

Published step changes are reproduced, not smoothed. The 2026 release contains an unusually large one-period move for the United Arab Emirates: the index falls from 317.94 in 2026Q1 to 190.03 in 2026Q2 in the quarterly table, and from 319.64 (March 2026) to 182.21 (April 2026) in the monthly table. Both official files carry the same break with no footnote, no missing-value flag and no accompanying methodology note. DDP Atlas therefore publishes the value unchanged: we do not smooth, average, rescale, interpolate or treat it as an input error. Readers comparing UAE values across 2026Q2 should treat the series as potentially discontinuous and check UNCTAD's own methodology before reading it as a change in market conditions.

Bilateral LSBCI

LSBCI measures liner connectivity between a pair of economies using five bilateral components. UNCTAD normalizes the score to the range 0–1. Historical observations are imported only from official published periods, and methodology/version metadata are retained so a change in the source series is not silently treated as a perfectly comparable continuation. Reversed rows for the same official bilateral pair are collapsed to a single observation after their values are checked for equality. Its scale is not comparable to LSCI or PLSCI points.

Reference frequency. The official UNCTAD bulk release currently publishes one reference quarter per year — 2006Q01 through 2026Q01, 21 reference observations — not a complete Q1/Q2/Q3/Q4 quarterly sequence. DDP Atlas reproduces exactly those published periods and labels them as annual Q1 reference observations. No quarter is interpolated, filled forward, averaged or synthesized, and a period absent from the official file is shown as unavailable rather than estimated.

Published scope. For LSBCI, DDP Atlas publishes only China ↔ approved focus-market pairs, one canonical row per pair (the reversed row is verified against the canonical value before it is dropped). The global bilateral matrix is a private source archive: it is filtered before import and is never stored in the database, the public bundle or a public URL.

Historical import scope

DDP Atlas stores reviewed official history rather than a single-year snapshot. The default public research view prioritizes China plus major origin/destination markets and hub ports, while the importer can retain a full reviewed geography set when required. Bilateral LSBCI is the exception: the importer enforces the China focus scope, rejects a global bilateral file, and accepts only a pre-filtered China artifact. Original source CSV checksums, row counts, source retrieval dates and the selected time/geography scope are retained with each import batch. The frontend defaults to a recent research window and exposes longer historical ranges without altering the underlying source values.

Airport cargo and air freight

Airport series follow each airport or aviation agency’s published category. Hong Kong’s Air Freight value is kept separate from Mail; Heathrow publishes Cargo in metric tonnes; Los Angeles World Airports reports Air Cargo as Freight and Mail in US tons. These totals are not China-origin export volumes and are not ranked across airports until definitions are confirmed. The World Bank series IS.AIR.GOOD.MT.K1 is annual million ton-kilometres, not airport tonnes.

The supplied airport files are staged in Payload pending rights review. Heathrow site terms limit commercial reproduction absent permission, and no explicit commercial redistribution terms were verified for the Hong Kong or LAWA exports. The World Bank indicator page lists CC BY 4.0 but credits ICAO; ICAO Data+ terms restrict publication without written authorization. The underlying-source question must be resolved before these observations can be approved for public display. IATA’s August 2026 report is summarized in original wording with a direct source link; its charts and full tables are not republished.

China export scope and internal links

China is the fixed research origin and service context. Official country connectivity indexes, airport totals and national TEU series retain their original statistical scope; none is reinterpreted as China-only export traffic. Explore Air Freight, Sea Freight, Resources, shipping routes or request a freight estimate.

Not a freight quote

These indicators describe published statistical observations. They do not represent current buy or sell rates, transit-time promises, real-time vessel positions, customs outcomes or an individual port-to-port booking. For a shipment estimate, use the existing freight estimate workflow.

Data sources and methodology