At Bloomberg, we provide the same live vessel position via the BMAP function on the terminal mainly so that oil / natural gas traders can monitor and speculate commodities flows based on ship traffic and reported contents of ships. Someone posted a screenshot on this Quora question:
It is definitely fun to play around with. Similar tools are provided to slice/dice the data to look at all the vessels which match particular criteria.
Similarly, all the data for positions of critical infrastructure (refineries, oil pipelines, power plants, etc) are provided as well as live storm tracking information so traders can determine if natural disasters will affect particular sectors or companies.
http://www.quora.com/Investing/What-are-the-coolest-function...
It is definitely fun to play around with. Similar tools are provided to slice/dice the data to look at all the vessels which match particular criteria.
Similarly, all the data for positions of critical infrastructure (refineries, oil pipelines, power plants, etc) are provided as well as live storm tracking information so traders can determine if natural disasters will affect particular sectors or companies.