---
name: world-bank-global-shipping-traffic-density-ingestion
description: "How to get World Bank Global Shipping Traffic Density data into a pandas DataFrame and Parquet: access, the request, the format, limits, quirks and terms."
---

# List World Bank shipping-density zip download links into pandas

Source entry: https://signal-lab-jet.vercel.app/datasets/world-bank-global-shipping-traffic-density
Provider: https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/search/dataset/0037580/Global-Shipping-Traffic-Density
Checked against the provider's documentation: 2026-11-05

## Access
- No account or key. Zip downloads are listed on the public dataset page.
- Credit World Bank / IMF World Seaborne Trade Monitoring System per CC BY 4.0 when you use the data.

## Request
```bash
curl -sL 'https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/search/dataset/0037580/Global-Shipping-Traffic-Density'
```

## Format
Dataset landing-page HTML containing direct .zip links for the six raster layers (Commercial, Fishing, Oil & Gas, Passenger, Leisure, Global); download a layer and read it with rasterio.

## Load into pandas and Parquet
Needs Python 3 with requests, pandas and pyarrow.
```python
"""World Bank Global Shipping Traffic Density: list the six layer zip links into pandas -> Parquet. No key; CC BY 4.0."""
import re
import requests
import pandas as pd

URL = "https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/search/dataset/0037580/Global-Shipping-Traffic-Density"
r = requests.get(URL, timeout=60)
r.raise_for_status()
links = sorted(set(re.findall(r'href="([^"]+\.zip)"', r.text)))
df = pd.DataFrame({"zip_url": links})
df.to_parquet("wb_shipping_density_zip_links.parquet", index=False)
print(len(df), "zip links found")

```
Run by us on 2026-11-05 (python 3 | pandas | pyarrow | requests). Result: 6 zip links found on 2026-11-05 (Commercial, Fishing, Oil & Gas, Passenger, Leisure, Global layers).

## Limits
- Static dataset (last updated May 3, 2021); no live updates.
- The Global layer zip alone is 510.1 MB; download only the layer(s) you need.

## Quirks
- The zip links point to datacatalogfiles.worldbank.org, a separate host from the dataset page.
- Layer filenames mix case (e.g. ShipDensity_Leisure.zip vs shipdensity_global.zip).

## Terms and attribution
- Dataset page states "License : Creative Commons Attribution 4.0".
- Dataset page states "Classification : Public".
- Terms page: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

## Sources
- https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/search/dataset/0037580/Global-Shipping-Traffic-Density: "License : Creative Commons Attribution 4.0"
- https://datacatalog.worldbank.org/search/dataset/0037580/Global-Shipping-Traffic-Density: "This data was obtained through a partnership with IMF, as part of IMF's World Seaborne Trade Monitoring System (Cerdeiro, Komaromi, Liu and Saeed, 2020)."

## Help improve this skill
Missing a source, or see something to improve? Call the MCP tool suggest_source or feedback (or POST /api/suggest or /api/feedback). Reviewed ideas: https://signal-lab-jet.vercel.app/agent-suggestions

Information for educational purposes only. Free tiers, limits and licenses belong to the providers and may change; check the provider's own terms before using the data.