Evaluation of ship collision risk in ships’ routeing waters: A Gini coefficient approach using AIS data

Abstract

Ships’ routeing was first adopted to reduce the risk of ship collisions and promote marine traffic efficiency. But as maritime transport continues to develop, the number of ships passing through ships’ routeing areas keeps increasing and the navigational environment is becoming increasingly complex, which also poses a major challenge to navigational safety. In this contribution, a quantitative assessment method based on the Gini coefficient is proposed to evaluate the ship collision risk in ships’ routeing waters. This method is applied to Ningbo Zhoushan Port, the Gini coefficient of the course over ground (COG) for each leg is calculated with the historical Automatic Identification System (AIS) data, and then the Hierarchical Clustering Algorithm (HCA) is applied to classify the 28 legs of the ships’ routeing waters in Ningbo Zhoushan Port into 5 risk levels. The results show that: PA 4 and 7 are high-risk areas; PA 1 and 2 are medium-high-risk areas. It is recommended that when navigating in these areas, ship officers and captains should be particularly cautious and that priority should be given to these areas when formulating ship collision risk prevention measures and risk control plans.