Learning and reference

Guides, handbooks, training and the general OSINT lists that cover everything this list leaves out on purpose.

The method matters more than the tool. These are the guides we point students to, the training we run or take part in, and the general OSINT lists that cover everything this list leaves out on purpose.

Guides and handbooks

  • UN AIS Handbook · Free · UN Committee of Experts on Big Data, AIS Task Team · The method handbook for cleaning and analysing AIS data for statistics, with worked examples. Most pages date from 2020 to 2023, but the fundamentals have not moved.
  • Peering Beyond the Clouds · Free · Bellingcat · The 2023 guide to finding ships in Sentinel-1 radar imagery with the Ship Detection Tool, and the best short introduction to SAR for analysts.
  • Bellingcat Online Investigation Toolkit · Free · Bellingcat · Hundreds of tool pages with cost, requirements, limitations and ethical notes, including a maritime section updated in 2026. Our pointer for general OSINT tools.
  • GIJN: Tracking Ships at Sea · Free · Global Investigative Journalism Network · A reporter’s guide to vessel tracking, ownership and imagery, with case examples.
  • Deep Dive by Rae Baker · Free · Rae Baker · Maritime OSINT guides from the author of Deep Dive, including a maritime patterning framework, port analysis and a Raspberry Pi AIS receiver build.
  • C4ADS · Free · C4ADS · Reports on illicit networks, sanctions evasion and the shadow fleet, with the data-driven method laid out in each one.
  • Setting up an SDR AIS receiver with AIS-catcher · Free · Worldwide AIS Network ApS · A step-by-step guide to building your own AIS receiver from a software-defined radio dongle, written by a commercial feed provider.
  • Free government nautical charts · Free · Anchorages · A maintained list of the national hydrographic offices that give their charts away, with links.

Data and reference

  • World Factbook Archive · Free (open source, MIT) · MilkMp, a community project not affiliated with the CIA · Every edition of the CIA World Factbook from 1990 to 2025 as a searchable site, a database and a free offline app, after the CIA discontinued the Factbook on 4 February 2026. Its Intelligence Atlas layers submarine cables, shipping routes, chokepoints and EEZ boundaries over the country data.
  • ODIS Catalogue of Sources · Free · UNESCO/IOC Project Office for IODE · A searchable catalogue of more than 3,000 ocean data and information sources, for finding the agency that holds the dataset you need.
  • Allianz Safety and Shipping Review · Free · Allianz Commercial · The annual review of ship losses, casualties and risk trends, the standard open reference on what goes wrong at sea and where.
  • The Organized Crime Index · Free · Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime · Country scores for criminal markets and actors, from arms and drugs to human trafficking, with the methodology published. Useful context for any illicit trade case.
  • Shipmap.org · Free · Kiln and the UCL Energy Institute · An animated map of the world’s merchant shipping over one year, built from 2012 AIS data. Old, but the best single picture of how trade moves for a classroom.
  • AIS datasets on Kaggle · Free account · Kaggle (Google) · Practice datasets of AIS positions uploaded by users, mostly copies of public releases such as MarineCadastre and the Danish files, for learning to clean and plot tracks.

Training

  • Summer School on Illicit Trade · Paid (fee published per edition) · University of Groningen · The annual summer school where this list gets used and tested each year, with sessions on maritime and supply-chain OSINT.
  • Atlas|Bear Academy · Paid (contact us) · Atlas|Bear · Professional development programmes in maritime security and supply chain intelligence from Atlas|Bear, the company AB//LABS spun off from; our people teach on them.

Other lists

  • awesome-osint · Free · jivoi and contributors · The largest general OSINT list, with about 1,450 entries. Its maritime section is three lines long, which is why this list exists.
  • OSINT Framework · Free · Justin Nordine · A categorised tree of general OSINT tools with registration and pricing markers and a weekly link check.

Last checked 2026-10-12.