Exploring effects of ship traffic characteristics and environmental conditions on ship collision frequency

Abstract

This study aims to model the complex relationship among the traffic characteristics (i.e. traffic flow, traffic speed, traffic density), environmental conditions (i.e. darkness condition, weather condition and traffic lane width) and frequency of ship collisions in the Yangtze River estuary areas. Taking into account the effects of ship approach angle, ship type, relative speed and darkness condition on the capability of ship collision avoidance, a dynamic ship domain model has been presented to measure ship collision frequency. Considering the big variation associated with the collision frequency, the measured ship collision frequency is further modeled as a loglogistic-distributed function of traffic characteristics and environmental conditions. Results show that the collision frequency is greater for (i) the bigger traffic flow; (ii) the bigger traffic density; (iii) the narrower traffic lane width; and (iv) the adverse weather condition. The darkness condition is the influencing factor that produces the biggest effect on the ship collision frequency.