Overview
The Descartes Labs Platform allows shipping and logistics companies to track and optimize the transport of bulk commodities around the world. They leverage our solution to:
- Model commodity and vessel throughput at key ports over time
- Run climate scenario analyses to understand the impact to commodity logistics across specific assets
- Generate local-scale weather forecasts for vulnerable supply chain locations
- Model complex market factors involved in the supply and demand of commodities
Case Study

© AIRBUS DS 2020
The Descartes Labs Platform Creates a Digital Twin of the Brazilian Iron Ore Supply Chain
The global iron ore market experienced significant disruption in early 2019 in the weeks following a major tailings dam failure near Brumadinho, Brazil. In order to mitigate the risk of additional dam failures, the Brazilian government halted all mining operations at mines with similar upstream tailings dams. Since Brazil represents approximately 25% of the global iron ore market share, the operational halt caused a major rebalancing in global iron ore flows.
The Descartes Labs Platform helped a key iron ore transport company determine when Brazilian mining activity would come back online and estimate when flows would return to normal. With our platform, the company was able to incorporate computer vision data, satellite imagery and AIS shipping traces to develop a digital twin of the affected mines and nearby delivery facilities that mapped and measured commodity flows and timing before, during and after the event.
With a multi-modal digital twin of the iron ore supply chain at each mine and port, the company captured critical insights into future commodity flows with computer vision model accuracy above 90%. This enabled them to respond effectively to a shorter-than-expected supply disruption.
Featured Video – Reservoir Modeling
Art of the Possible
With the Descartes Labs Platform, business and data science teams can rapidly hypothesis, test, and deploy predictive analytics. These examples showcase some of our customers’ success, but the possibilities are endless.
Customers
Customers include shipping and logistics companies, commodity producers and service providers that deal with all aspects of global logistics:
Freight companies
Freight forwarders
Carriers
Third party logistics providers
Ship charterers and operators
Ship owners and brokers