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 lag

Ship 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 / weekly

Brent and U.S. crude (WTI) prices, the gap between them, retail fuel prices, and the crude supply buffer.

U.S. government open data — public domain. Free to use with courtesy attribution.

FRED (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis)

weekly / daily / monthly

The St. Louis Fed Financial Stress Index, the VIX volatility index, the Sahm recession rule, and retail gasoline.

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, and the gasoline series are U.S. government and Federal Reserve public-domain data.

GPSJam

daily

GPS-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)

GDELT Project

~15 minutes

The “what’s being reported” news strip.

GDELT surfaces recent coverage; we filter it to reputable financial and wire outlets 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.