Characterisation of the expected weather conditions in the main European coastal traffic routes

Abstract

The maritime traffic in the European seas is analysed in order to characterize the different areas in terms of traffic density and average navigational distance from the coast, assessing the relative weight of each coastal area with respect to the total European seaborne trades. The main coastal routes are also detected by highlighting the tracks that present a higher density of geo-located ship reports. The state-of-the-art ERA-interim weather database is used to compute the weighted average characteristics of the sea-state conditions in those routes, providing a meaningful reference for the waves that ships are asked to face in the coastal areas, where the occurrence of accidents is higher and further effort is required to minimize the risk at sea.