Design and Safety Assessment of Recommended Route off the Western Coast of Izu O Shima Island

Abstract

Ship routeing systems (e.g., traffic separation schemes) have been established worldwide to ensure ship traffic safety. There are no specific measures to establish an effective ship route. We have previously proposed a method to design and assess the route comparison with the present traffic flow in the interest to establish an effective ship routeing system, particularly for recommended routes. The method consists mainly of the following procedures: understanding the existing phenomena and the issues in the target area by analyzing target traffic flow; designing safety measures; assessing the safety measures; and determining the optimal safety measure. This method was used to design and assess the recommended route off the western coast of Izu O Shima Island. This route has been in service since January 2018. The purpose of this study is to validate the proposed method. First, the technical details of the method are described. An automatic identification system (AIS) observation was conducted before and after the implementation to validate the effectiveness of the recommended route for reducing collisions. The results show that the recommended route effectively reduces the risk of collisions. More specifically, the proposed method was found to be useful when establishing an effective recommended route.