Quantitative critical ship arena based on collision accident reports to pre-warn close-quarters situations

Abstract

This paper proposes the quantitative Critical Ship Arena (C-SA) to pre-warn close-quarters situations using ship collision accident reports. The framework of the critical ship arena is developed based on the ship arena from the perspective of the collision avoidance actions and its geometric distribution around the own ship. The boundary of the C-SA is extracted based on its definition. The radii of the boundary of the C-SA are derived using statistical knowledge. The quantitative critical ship arena in traffic-intensive waters obtained from ship collision accident reports is verified by simulation experiments, which can pre-warn the close-quarters situation. The results show that the distribution of the critical ship arena under various own-ship lengths is similar and nearly oval, which is approximately semi-circular at the bearing of −90°–90° and elliptical at the bearing of 90°–270°. The proposed critical ship arena can pre-warn the close-quarters situation to prevent individual ship collisions and improve maritime traffic safety in different situations and waters, effectively supporting intelligent ship navigation.