Maps, weather and charts

The maps, historical imagery, weather, currents and charts that earn a maritime sentence beyond the general OSINT toolkits.

The general mapping tools every OSINT analyst uses are covered well by Bellingcat’s toolkit and we do not repeat them. The ones here earn a maritime sentence. Historical imagery shows a port changing. Russian and Chinese maps cover ports the Western providers cover thinly. Weather and currents test whether a claimed track is physically possible, and charts check draught against depth.

Maps and street-level imagery

  • Google Earth · Free · Google · The desktop Pro version has a historical imagery slider, the easiest way to watch a berth, a terminal or a shipyard change over years.
  • OpenStreetMap · Free · OpenStreetMap Foundation · Community-mapped berths, terminals, piers and port infrastructure with tags you can query.
  • OpenSeaMap · Free · OpenSeaMap · A nautical overlay on OpenStreetMap: buoys, lights, harbours and anchorages.
  • Bing Maps · Free · Microsoft · A second aerial imagery source, often from a different date than Google’s, with bird’s-eye views of many ports.
  • Yandex Maps · Free · Yandex · The best coverage and street panoramas for Russian and Central Asian ports.
  • Baidu Maps · Free · Baidu · Coverage and street views of Chinese ports. It uses its own shifted coordinate system, so convert before you compare positions.
  • DualMaps · Free · MapChannels · Road map, aerial view and Street View side by side for one point.
  • WikiMapia · Free · WikiMapia · Crowd-labelled places, including industrial sites, terminals and naval facilities that official maps leave blank.
  • KartaView · Free · Grab · Crowd-sourced street-level photos, useful where Street View has nothing.
  • PeakFinder · Free · PeakFinder GmbH · Draws the mountain skyline from any viewpoint, which geolocates many coastal photographs.
  • GeoNames · Free · GeoNames · Gazetteer of place names with coordinates and alternate spellings, for matching ports named in several languages.

Weather and sea state

  • Windy · Freemium · Windyty SE · Wind, wave, swell and current forecasts and recent history from several models. A quick check on whether a claimed speed or route makes sense.
  • earth.nullschool · Free · Cameron Beccario · Animated global wind, ocean current and wave fields, with a time slider.
  • Zoom Earth · Freemium · Neave Interactive · Near-real-time weather satellite imagery and storm tracks that affect shipping routes.
  • Copernicus Marine · Free account · Mercator Ocean International · Ocean current, wave, temperature and sea-ice datasets, for drift and feasibility analysis.

Charts and bathymetry

  • GEBCO · Free · GEBCO (IHO and IOC) · The global bathymetry grid. Can a ship of this draught be where its AIS says it is?
  • NOAA ENC Viewer · Free · NOAA Office of Coast Survey · US electronic navigational charts in the browser.
  • Navionics ChartViewer · Free · Garmin · Worldwide nautical charts with depths and anchorages in the browser.
  • EMODnet · Free · European Commission · European marine data: bathymetry, human activities (cables, pipelines, wind farms, dredging) and more as map layers and downloads.

Last checked 2026-10-12.