The geographic hierarchy is the way by which Xeneta organizes ports across the world into regional groupings based on their proximity and the price similarity of shipping to them.
Overview
The lowest level of the geo-hierarchy is an individual port and the highest level is the continent containing the port. As an example, the geographical hierarchy for the port of Oslo (NOOSL) looks as follows:
World → Europe → Northern Europe → Scandinavia → Norway South East → Oslo
When searching for rates, Xeneta always attempts to find direct contracted rates for your selected trade lane. If Xeneta is unable to find rates at a lower level in the geo-hierarchy, it will move one level up and attempt to find prices for a larger area. If it cannot find rates at the new level, it will continue to step up through the geo-hierarchy until it reaches a geographic level where it can provide a price, or until it exhausts all possible areas and returns no results.
As Xeneta moves up the geo-hierarchy, it considers larger and larger areas of the world, and thus loses precision for its aggregated prices in exchange for being able to provide a price in general.
Geographic Data Quality
Xeneta can display two types of rates:
- Contracted rates — rates that show aggregated contract prices between two ports
- Regional rates — rates that show aggregated prices between larger regions when exact port rates are unavailable
Example — Contracted Rate
Example — Regional Rate
Geo-Hierarchy Indicator
Most regional rates comes with geo-hierarchy indicator that expresses how far up the geo-hierarchy Xeneta had to move up to provide a regional rate.
With each step up the geo-hierarchy, the rate information becomes less precise, and the geo-hierarchy indicator changes color to reflect this.
| Color | Precision | Example |
 |
1 step up |
Norway South East → Oslo |
 |
2 steps up |
Scandinavia → Norway South East → Oslo |
 |
3 steps up |
Northern Europe → Scandinavia → Norway South East → Oslo |
 |
Not enough data available | N/A |
Clicking on the data quality indicator will open a dialog that explains how the origin and destination locations were affected by moving up the geo-hierarchy.
For example, in the picture below, there was insufficient data to show contracted rate information from Shanghai (CNSGH) to Muuga (EEMUG). However, Xeneta was able to provide a regional rate by moving one step up the geo-hierarchy from Shanghai to China East Main.
Example — Traversing the Geo-Hierarchy
In this scenario, we'll be looking at the Oslo–Hamburg trade lane. We can illustrate both ports using the geo-hierarchy approach — with the individual port is at the bottom, followed by increasing regional scope with each step up until the scope reaches the continent level:
|
World |
→
|
|
|
Europe |
World |
|
|
Northern Europe |
Europe |
|
|
Scandinavia |
Northern Europe |
|
|
Norway South East |
North Europe Main |
|
|
Oslo |
Hamburg |
Both ports are situated in the Northern Europe region, but diverge into distinct regions — Scandinavia and North Europe Main — one level down. By default, Xeneta will first look for contracted rates directly between Oslo and Hamburg.
If Xeneta does not have enough rate data to show the contracted rate between Oslo and Hamburg, it will proceed to move one step up the geo-hierarchy. The system can step up on either the origin port or the destination port, depending on the data available to Xeneta at that time.
|
World |
→
|
|
|
Europe |
World |
|
|
Northern Europe |
Europe |
|
|
Scandinavia |
Northern Europe |
|
|
Norway South East |
North Europe Main |
|
|
Oslo |
Hamburg |
One step up the geo-hierarchy will expand the potential candidates for regional rates to the Norway South East and North Europe main regions. A single step up the geo-hierarchy — indicated by in the application — will allow Xeneta to look at the following regions in order to establish a regional rate:
- Oslo–North Europe Main
- Norway South East–Hamburg
If a single step up the geo-hierarchy does not yield enough rates to confidently show a regional rate, the system will take two steps up the geo-hierarchy.
|
World |
→
|
|
|
Europe |
World |
|
|
Northern Europe |
Europe |
|
|
Scandinavia |
Northern Europe |
|
|
Norway South East |
North Europe Main |
|
|
Oslo |
Hamburg |
Two steps up the geo-hierarchy — indicated by in the application — will expand potential candidates for a regional rate all the way up to the Scandinavia and Northern Europe regions. As before, the system will be able to take two steps up the geo-hierarchy across both the origin and destination, meaning that Xeneta will look at the following regions in order to establish a regional rate:
- Norway South East–North Europe Main
- Oslo–Northern Europe
- Scandinavia–Hamburg
This process will continue until Xeneta finds a level in the geo-hierarchy that can provide a valid freight rate or until it determines that it does not have enough data.
Summary
Xeneta organizes individual ports into groups based on shared properties. Some groups are based on geographic proximity, while others are based on both proximity and price correlation.
When providing a freight rate, Xeneta does its best to provide a contracted rate. If no contracted rates are available within the system, Xeneta will instead provide a regional rate based on the geo-hierarchy. Regional rates have different levels of precision based on how far up the geo-hierarchy the system had to go to provide rates.