Data sources in Kartradar
All sources behind the map, with update rates, coverage and the limitations worth knowing about.
Kartradar makes no measurements of its own. Everything you see comes from others, and the map is never better than its source. Here is each source, what it covers, how often it is fetched, and what is worth knowing about its limitations.
Public transport
Entur (NLOD)
Buses, trams, metro, ferries and trains. Fetched every 30 seconds. Entur is the Norwegian government's national hub for public transport data and covers most of the county transport companies.
Limitation: Entur only shows the companies that actually submit positions. Ruter in Oslo does not, so the metro, trams and city buses in the capital are missing entirely. See the measurements that show why.
Stops and departures come from Entur's journey planner and the national stop register. When you zoom in, every stop in Norway is shown, and tapping one gives the next departures, in real time where the company provides it. The departure board also works in Oslo: Ruter does not send positions, but does send departure times.
Bane NOR
Train positions from Bane NOR's train map. Fetched every 30 seconds. This is an unofficial API with no guarantees, used because it gives a more complete picture of train traffic than anything else available.
Outside Norway
The map also shows public transport from Finland (the Helsinki region, via HSL), the Netherlands (the whole country, via OVapi) and Sweden (16 transport companies, via Trafiklab). All of them share positions openly in the GTFS-realtime format.
The position feed only says where a vehicle is, not what it is. The right symbol, line number, destination and route are therefore taken from each country's timetable database, which is downloaded and indexed once a day — well over a million trips in total.
When you tap a foreign vehicle, the route it follows is drawn, just as for Norwegian buses. Upcoming stops, however, come from the real-time feed, and there the countries differ a lot: Finland sends the whole trip, the Netherlands the nearest stops, Sweden usually only the next one. How much is shared is the source's choice, not ours.
Limitation: a vehicle on a brand-new route, or a departure the timetable database does not recognise, is shown as "Other" until the next daily update. For Finland, the route's usual path in the direction the vehicle is travelling is drawn, since the source does not say which individual departure it is — minor variations at the ends may therefore differ.
Why Denmark is missing: Danish companies share real-time data, but only as expected departure times. We checked the entire open Danish feed: 728 departures from Movia, Midttrafik, NT, FynBus and DSB, and not a single position. Midttrafik shows its buses on a map in its own app, but does not share the positions as open data. It is the same situation as for Ruter in Oslo — read more about why.
Aircraft
adsb.lol
Planes and helicopters, fetched regularly around the clock. The data comes from a volunteer network of private individuals who run ADS-B receivers and share the signals openly.
Licence: Contains data from adsb.lol, made available under the Open Database License (ODbL 1.0).
Limitation: an aircraft is only shown if it transmits ADS-B and someone nearby picks up the signal. Coverage is good over land and along the coast, poorer far out at sea and in the mountains. Military aircraft and some private aircraft hide their position deliberately.
Avinor
Airports with departures and arrivals. These are scheduled and updated times from the airport itself, not positions.
Ships
aisstream.io
AIS messages from ships, received continuously over an open connection rather than fetched at intervals. AIS is the maritime system in which vessels broadcast their identity, position, course and speed.
BarentsWatch (NLOD)
AIS for Norwegian waters, from the Norwegian Coastal Administration's own network of receivers. Better coverage close to the Norwegian coast than the global sources.
Limitation: AIS is radio, and radio has a range. Coastal areas have dense coverage from land stations, while the open sea requires satellite, which updates less often. A ship in the middle of the Norwegian Sea can therefore sit still on the map for a good while before it jumps ahead. Leisure boats and smaller vessels often have no AIS at all.
Sanctioned vessels (OFAC)
The map can show which ships are on the US sanctions list, the "Specially Designated Nationals" list from the US Treasury. The list is fetched every day and currently contains 1525 vessels with an IMO number. The layer is off by default and can be turned on under "More layers".
The match is made on the IMO number, which follows the hull for its whole life and does not change with a new name, sale or reflagging. That is why sanctions lists use exactly that number. AIS sends it in separate messages, but only about half of the ships in Nordic waters provide it — the rest are fishing boats and smaller vessels without an IMO number.
Coastal route, Coast Guard and the Sea Rescue Society
Hurtigruten and Havila on the Bergen–Kirkenes coastal route are recognised by the ships' radio identity (MMSI), Coast Guard vessels by names starting with "KV", and the Norwegian Sea Rescue Society's boats by names starting with "RS" or "RESCUE", all with a Norwegian radio identity. The list is maintained by Kartradar and is not an official source; a new ship in service is included when the list is updated.
This is a reproduction, not an assessment. Kartradar does not flag any ship on its own judgement. If a vessel is shown as listed, it is because its IMO number appears in the official list, and the panel states which programme and listing date apply, with a link to the source.
Limitation: a ship is only shown when it transmits AIS itself, and vessels in this category often switch it off. The EU and the UK are not yet included: the EU's machine-readable list only contains asset-freeze decisions, while its vessels are listed in the port-ban annex published as PDF, and the UK's ship list is outside the open OFSI file.
Roads
Norwegian Public Roads Administration (NLOD)
Traffic cameras, road incidents and travel times, delivered via DATEX II. Incidents are fetched every 10 minutes, the camera list every hour. The camera image itself is only loaded when you open the camera.
Fintraffic Digitraffic (CC BY 4.0)
About 800 road cameras in Finland, most with several camera views you can switch between in the panel. The images are updated roughly every 10 minutes. Also all passenger trains in Finland, with train type, route, delay and next stops. Source: Fintraffic / digitraffic.fi, licence CC BY 4.0.
Trafikverket
About 1,500 road cameras in Sweden, both traffic flow cameras (a new image roughly every minute) and road weather cameras (roughly every 5 minutes). Also all trains in Sweden (position every 20 seconds, with operator, route, delay and next stops) and Swedish road reports: accidents, roadworks and road closures. Fetched from the Swedish Transport Administration's open API (data.trafikverket.se).
NVDB (NLOD)
Bridges, height and weight restrictions for heavy transport.
Important: this information is not legally binding. For actual planning of heavy transport, the Public Roads Administration's own road lists apply, not this map.
Norwegian Mapping Authority — addresses and place names
The place search in the driving route queries two of the Mapping Authority's open services: the official road addresses in the cadastre and the national place-name register. Both are free and need no key, and they are the authority on what a place is called and where it is in Norway.
Limitation: a search only finds what is registered. New addresses may be missing for a while, and many place names occur in several parts of the country — "Melhus" is both a town in Trøndelag and a mountain farm in Aurland. That is why the county or municipality is shown with each result, so you can pick the right one.
OpenRouteService
The driving route itself is calculated by OpenRouteService, run by the research institute HeiGIT using road data from OpenStreetMap. The route shown is the fastest in time, not the shortest in kilometres.
Important: the driving time is based on the speed limits in the map data, not on current traffic. None of the open route planners have live traffic data. Queues, accidents, roadworks, closed roads and road conditions are therefore not included in the estimate, and a trip may in practice take considerably longer than the map says. The route is a suggestion drawn on a map, not turn-by-turn guidance — see About Kartradar for what it must not be used for.
Limitation: the road data is crowd-sourced. A road that has recently been closed, rerouted or closed for the season may still be in the data, and private roads and barriers are unevenly registered. Signs on site always take precedence over the map.
Emergencies and nature
Radio Browser
Radio stations in the Nordics with location and stream, from the open registry radio-browser.info. The audio is played directly from the station's own stream; Kartradar does not relay anything.
Live broadcasts (links)
Links to live broadcasts run by others: air traffic control at LiveATC and launches (from Launch Library). They open with the provider, in a new tab.
Norwegian Coastal Administration (Kystverket)
Navigational warnings: coastal warnings along the whole coast and NAVAREA XIX warnings for the northern sea areas, for example unlit lights, danger areas and work in the fairway. Fetched from the Coastal Administration's public warning pages every 30 minutes. Not for navigation; use the official channels at sea.
Police log (NLOD)
The Norwegian police's own public messages, fetched every minute. The colours on the map follow the type of incident.
Norwegian Meteorological Institute
Warnings for wind, rain, snow, avalanches and floods, with the official colour level from MET.
EMSC
Earthquakes, fetched every minute. Magnitude and depth are preliminary estimates right after a quake and are often adjusted in the following hours.
Smithsonian Global Volcanism Program
Volcanoes with ongoing activity, updated every six hours. These are weekly reports, not real time.
Limitation: since 2 October 2026, the Smithsonian has blocked automated access to the weekly report. While the block is in place, the map instead shows the eruptions the Smithsonian volcano database has recorded as ongoing. It is updated less often, and the panel states how old the data is. The weekly report is used again automatically when it becomes available.
NASA FIRMS
Hot spots from satellite, updated every half hour. A hot spot is not necessarily a fire: industrial plants, flaring offshore and sun reflections give the same signal.
Sea and energy
Norwegian Offshore Directorate (NLOD)
Fixed installations on the Norwegian continental shelf. The positions are accurate to roughly 0–300 metres and must not be used for navigation.
Production and reserves per field (oil, gas and remaining volumes) come from the Norwegian Offshore Directorate's fact pages. The figures are monthly and published 2–3 months late. We calculate the daily average ourselves from the monthly figures.
NOAA NDBC and Argo
Weather buoys and drifting ocean floats with temperature and salinity profiles from the depths.
Statnett and hvakosterstrommen.no
Power flow between price areas, spot prices and reservoir levels.
Maps and images
The background maps come from Esri, Maxar and Earthstar Geographics, the satellite images of cloud cover from NASA GIBS, and the photos of aircraft types in the info panel from Wikimedia Commons, always with photo credit.
When something looks wrong
A vehicle standing in a field, a ship jumping over land, a bus driving the wrong way: it is almost always the source, not the map. Positions can be old, inaccurate or registered incorrectly at departure. Kartradar shows what the source says, and does not quietly correct data we do not own.
Between two updates, the symbols glide smoothly along their own course so the movement does not stutter. That is visual smoothing of the last known measurement, not new information.