Global trade runs through a small number of physical points.
What threatens them is not always the same kind of risk.
The Narrows measures what a specific importer, cargo, or institution has riding on a specific chokepoint, and what a credible alternative would cost. That number holds whether the disruption turns out to be a drought, a blockade, or a decision made by a government with its own reasons. Exposure is a structural fact. It does not wait on a probability to become real.
Some risk can be modelled from a stable distribution. Some risk is a decision someone else gets to make.
A small number of points carry an outsized share of global trade: straits, canals, ports with no real substitute. Everyone can see them on a map. The harder question is what runs through them, and what kind of threat that actually is.
Weather, congestion, and infrastructure failure are physical processes. They have real statistical structure, and the industry has genuinely good tools for pricing that structure. A government's decision to close a strait, sanction a supplier, or reroute a pipeline is a different kind of event, made by an actor with its own incentives, not drawn from a distribution. Treating the two the same, assigning a strait closure the same kind of annual probability as a storm making landfall, is a category error, not a modelling refinement.
The Narrows does not try to predict which kind of threat materialises, or when. It measures what is exposed either way: which importer depends on which corridor, for which commodity, at what percentage of total supply, and what a credible alternative costs. That number is the same whether the disruption turns out to be a drought or a decision. Exposure is a structural fact. It does not need a probability attached to be real, or to be priced.
The points where the world narrows.
The name refers to the points where constraints are hard, data has meaning, and decisions cannot be deferred. A strait through which 30% of global seaborne trade passes is a narrow. A port that handles the majority of a country's grain imports is a narrow. A corridor that has no viable alternative is a narrow.
At these points, the structure of the world becomes legible. The dependencies are real. The exposure is quantifiable. The decisions that flow from understanding them are consequential. That is where The Narrows works.
Six products. One data foundation.
Every product is built on the same underlying Chokepoint Dependency Model, 37 maritime risk corridors, $2.15 trillion in matched trade value, 44 importing countries, and 17 commodity classes. Different clients need some, all, or none of them.
3,778 ports scored across four risk dimensions: accessibility, reliability, trade concentration, and political stability. The entry point to The Narrows data layer.
Open the Port Risk Index →Corridor and scenario analysis demonstrating the method against live events. Published outputs proving the model and quantifying disruption.
Read the analysis →Bilateral trade dependency at commodity level across the world's principal maritime corridors. The data foundation. Available to institutional and analytical clients.
Enquire →The CDM applied to a specific cargo portfolio. Locked positions, divertible positions, and rerouting cost by vessel class, charter and bunker included, tanker to dry bulk.
View demonstration →Decision-support for live events. Committed fleet positions, decision windows, diversion cost and timeline by vessel. Built for the desk managing a closure in real time.
Enquire →The Narrows methodology applied to a specific event, portfolio, or research question. Commissioned scenario and corridor analysis delivered as a report.
Enquire →For a look at how the model has held up against real disruption, not just a forward claim, read We Built the Model on 2023 Data. Then 2024 Happened., a systematic account of what the model predicted against what actually occurred through the Red Sea and Panama disruptions.
Every demo is a live session. Every assumption is yours to change.
The Narrows is a model run against the interests and priorities of specific counterparties, corridors, and commodities. Every parameter the model uses can be replaced with the client's own assumptions.
Detailed documentation is available under NDA for qualified counterparties.
The methodology came from a different kind of risk work.
Adam Fysh spent several years building quantitative risk frameworks within the United Nations system, working on disaster risk reduction and structural vulnerability analysis in fragile and trade-dependent economies. The work was always the same question in different forms: which bilateral dependencies concentrate the most risk, and what does a credible alternative actually cost.
The transition to maritime trade risk follows directly from that background. The analytical structure that identifies which nations bear the greatest cost when a supply chain breaks also identifies which importers are most exposed when a trade corridor fails. The Narrows applies the same methodology to the geography of global trade.
The analysis published here is primary research. Every assumption is stated. The model reflects one person's careful view of what the data shows and what it does not.
One address. A person replies.
All enquiries, demo requests, press, research collaboration, methodology questions go to the same address. Response time is typically within one business day.
You can always know what you have riding on it.