The quantitative assessment of marine traffic safety in the Gulf of Finland, on the basis of AIS data

Navigational risk assessment is a complex process, which aims to determine the level of safety over the analyzed area. Usually two approaches are used: qualitative and quantitative. Engineers tend to view risk in an objective way in relation to safety, and as such use the concept of risk as an objective safety criteria. Among engineers risk is defined as a product of probability of occurrence of an undesired event and the expected consequences in terms of human, economic and environmental loss. These two components are equally important; therefore appropriate estimation of these values is a matter of great significance. This paper deals with one of these two components: the probability of vessels. collision assessment. A new approach for probability estimation of collision between vessels is presented, rooted in aviation experiences. The presented model for collision frequency estimation takes into account historical traffic data from AIS, generalized vessel dynamics and uses advanced statistical and optimization methods (Monte-Carlo, Genetic Algorithms).