IPSC Strategic Intelligence Unit
Where the region's sea lanes narrow to a point.
The Strategic Chokepoints Map charts the straits, channels and passages that carry the Indo-Pacific's trade and naval traffic — and layers every recorded pressure incident on top, so you can see exactly where coercion meets geography.
LY 01–04 · WHAT THE MAP LAYERS
Four layers, one chokepoint picture.
A strait is more than a line on a chart. The map stacks geography, traffic, pressure and dependency so each chokepoint can be read as a system — and its vulnerability assessed against real incidents.
Chokepoint geography
The straits, channels and passages themselves — Malacca, Singapore, Sunda, Lombok, Bashi, the Taiwan Strait and the Miyako gap — with widths, depths and navigational constraints.
Trade & naval flows
The sea lines of communication that pass through each chokepoint: energy shipments, container traffic, undersea cables and the naval transit routes that shadow them.
Incident overlay
Recorded coercion events from IPSC's incident corpus — patrols, swarming, cable interference, closures and exercises — plotted where they touch a chokepoint or its approaches.
Exposure & alternatives
Which economies depend on each passage, what a disruption would cost, and where realistic alternative routings exist — the strategic weight behind every marker.
METHOD · STRAIT TO CHART
From open sources to a charted chokepoint.
Every chokepoint profile and every overlaid incident is the end of an auditable pipeline. Nothing appears on the map that cannot be traced to a dated, sourced record.
Chokepoint profiles
Each strait is profiled from hydrographic, trade and defence sources: geometry, flows, littoral actors and the legal regime that governs passage.
Structured collection
Analysts run monthly domain briefs against official releases, specialist media and recurring data series, capturing incidents in a controlled schema.
Geographic attribution
Validated incidents are matched to the chokepoint or approach they affect, scored for magnitude, direction and confidence, and recency-weighted.
Layered chart
Profiles and incidents render as a filterable chart — by chokepoint, layer, time window and actor — with every marker linked to its source record.
WHO IT SERVES
Built for people who brief others.
Policy & defence analysts
Compare pressure across chokepoints over time, spot where activity migrates from one passage to another, and anchor assessments to sourced incidents.
Corporate risk & shipping teams
Understand exposure at the passages your cargo, energy and data actually transit — and stress-test rerouting options against real incident patterns.
Researchers & educators
A citable, time-stamped chokepoint record for coursework, fellowships and publications, aligned with IPSC's research centres and executive programs.
Geography doesn't move. Pressure does.
Open the live map to explore the region's chokepoints layer by layer — or contact the Strategic Intelligence Unit for briefings built on the underlying corpus.