Where the data comes from
Sources
Landfall is built on free, publicly accessible data, and no source is scored without attribution. One series, Cboe’s VIX, is proprietary, and we show it only as a derived score, never republished raw. Below is every feed we use, what it drives, how often it updates, and how it’s credited. All trademarks and data rights remain with their respective owners, and inclusion here doesn’t imply their endorsement.
Sources that feed the gauges
IMF PortWatch
daily · ~4-day lagShip transits through the strait vs. a normal baseline, the physical-flow signal.
Satellite-derived chokepoint traffic from the IMF and partners. Used with attribution under the IMF’s data terms. PortWatch publishes no baseline, so we compute a conservative one from its own history.
U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA)
daily / weeklyBrent and U.S. crude (WTI) prices, the gap between them, retail fuel prices, the crude supply buffer, and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.
U.S. government open data, public domain. Free to use with courtesy attribution.
FRED (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis)
weekly / daily / monthlyThe St. Louis Fed Financial Stress Index, the VIX volatility index, the Sahm recession rule, weekly jobless claims, the Treasury yield curve, and 5-year breakeven inflation.
Accessed through FRED with attribution. The volatility index is Cboe’s VIX (the Chicago Board Options Exchange), the property of its originator, shown only as a normalized, derived reading, never republished raw. The St. Louis Fed Financial Stress Index, the Sahm rule, jobless claims, and the yield-curve series are U.S. government and Federal Reserve public-domain data.
Wikipedia, 2026 Strait of Hormuz crisis
checked several times a dayInterim source for the maritime-incidents count, the community-maintained list of vessels attacked near the strait, which aggregates official UKMTO advisories and press reporting.
Read via the public MediaWiki API. A compiled, community-edited record (so the latest day or two can lag), used until the official feeds below are wired in. Text under CC BY-SA 4.0.
MARAD MSCI (U.S. Maritime Administration)
per advisory/alert (email)Official U.S. Maritime Advisories and Alerts for the region, drives the “U.S. maritime advisory in effect” tag on the strait map.
U.S. Department of Transportation advisories received via MARAD’s subscriber distribution (GovDelivery). U.S. government work, public domain. Advisories are regional threat notices and are never counted as incidents.
UKMTO (UK Maritime Trade Operations)
per incident (near-real-time)Official maritime incident warnings, attacks, boardings, and seizures near the strait. Integration in progress via UKMTO’s subscriber email distribution; it will replace the interim source above.
The Royal Navy’s maritime security reporting centre for this region. Contains public sector information (UKMTO) licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. UKMTO does not endorse this site.
GPSJam
dailyGPS-interference intensity near the strait, a proxy for conflict and jamming activity.
A daily aggregation of aircraft navigation-accuracy reports, derived from ADS-B Exchange (a community flight-tracking network). GPSJam publishes no formal license, so we treat this as a courtesy attribution rather than a granted redistribution right: we show only a derived intensity value and credit both projects. It is a labeled proxy, not a direct measure of military activity.
Context sources (not scored)
Google News
~15 minutesThe “what’s being reported” news strip.
Google News surfaces recent coverage; we filter it to reputable financial and wire outlets (AP, Reuters, Bloomberg, CNBC, the Financial Times, and the Wall Street Journal) and to on-topic headlines, then link out to the original articles. Headlines and links belong to their publishers. News is display-only and never enters a score.
On accuracy and corrections
Every source is compromised in some direction, ship trackers can be faked, governments spin the story, and the news swings back and forth. That’s precisely why Landfall shows several independent signals side by side and flags when they disagree, rather than trusting any one of them. If you spot an error or know a better free source, please get in touch.