The app is based on a map, updated in real time, which illustrates where Port of Tallinn passengers come from (ie. their citizenship, not necessarily where they are going to or from on their trip) as well as gender, age, and which shipping lines they have used.

The idea was the brainchild of a hackathon-style innovation day at in conjunction with the Tehnopol Startup Incubator in Tallinn last year, Port of Tallinn marketing and communications manager Sirle Arro said.

''We came to the conclusion that we amass plenty of interesting data on the some 10 million passengers who pass through the Port of Tallinn every year, yet we don't put that to good use,'' she said.

Useful info to disseminate

''This type of data is anyway needed in case of emergency; however there are plenty of Estonian authorities and organisations who could use this information to make their own work more effective. We got the idea for gathering all the non-personal data on the one page which could then be shared by shipping lines, the statistics board, the highways authority and various tourism-related businesses,'' Ms Arro explained.

The web app is available to all (in Estonian) here, and is updated in real time once the data has been made available by the Port of Tallinn.

A quick glance at the picture on Saturday, 22 December, as regards citizenship or nation of origin of passenger, showed that the largest group to pass through the port were Estonian citizens, perhaps unsurprisingly, with over 1,000 passengers. Estonia's immediate EU neighbours, Finland, Latvia and Lithuania made up the next largest contingents with numbers in the hundreds, and the Russian Federation and most northern and north-eastern European nations were significantly in the picture.

Outliers

Further afield, passengers from the United States, India, Brazil and China had also passed via the port on 22 December. Some perhaps less expected countries of origin included the West African nation of Niger, and some Southeast Asian countries including Vietnam and Thailand.

Naturally as the app continues to be updated, we can expect a fuller picture to emerge.

Principal regular ferry lines used by passengers passing through Tallinn at present are Viking Line, Eckerö and Tallink. Larger cruise ships, which generally carry a much larger complement of passengers, are more infrequent visitors but their data would also be included.

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