Journal of Marine Science and Engineering Article AIS-Based Multiple Vessel Collision and Grounding Risk Identification based on Adaptive Safety Domain Azzeddine Bakdi 1,*, Ingrid Kristine Glad 1, Erik Vanem 1,2 and Øystein Engelhardtsen 2 1 Department of Mathematics, University of Oslo, 0851 Oslo, Norway; [email protected] (I.K.G.); [email protected] (E.V.) 2 DNV GL Group Technology and Research, 1322 Høvik, Norway; [email protected] * Correspondence: [email protected] Received: 21 November 2019; Accepted: 17 December 2019; Published: 19 December 2019 Abstract: The continuous growth in maritime traffic and recent developments towards autonomous navigation have directed increasing attention to navigational safety in which new tools are required to identify real-time risk and complex navigation situations. These tools are of paramount importance to avoid potentially disastrous consequences of accidents and promote safe navigation at sea. In this study, an adaptive ship-safety-domain is proposed with spatial risk functions to identify both collision and grounding risk based on motion and maneuverability conditions for all vessels. The algorithm is designed and validated through extensive amounts of Automatic Identification System (AIS) data for decision support over a large area, while the integration of the algorithm with other navigational systems will increase effectiveness and ensure reliability. Since a successful evacuation of a potential vessel-to-vessel collision, or a vessel grounding situation, is highly dependent on the nearby maneuvering limitations and other possible accident situations, multi-vessel collision and grounding risk is considered in this work to identify real-time risk. The presented algorithm utilizes and exploits dynamic AIS information, vessel registry and high-resolution maps and it is robust to inaccuracies of position, course and speed over ground records. The computation-efficient algorithm allows for real-time situation risk identification at a large-scale monitored map up to country level and up to several years of operation with a very high accuracy. Keywords: AIS; risk identification; maritime navigation accident; multiple vessels; collision risk; grounding risk; spatial risk function; vessel maneuverability; safety domain; decision support 1. Introduction Maritime transport activities shape a new type of economic sector considered as the blue economy [1]. Since about 90% of the world’s merchandise are transported by sea [2], maritime transport plays a central and potential role in economy nowadays. In parallel, safety requirements are continuously improved to avoid hazardous accidents and ensure a sustainable growth in maritime operations. According to the recent annual review of marine casualties and incidents in 2018 [3] by the European maritime safety agency, more than 20,000 marine casualties and incidents have been reported at the European level in 2011–2017 only. Together, these accidents caused more than 680 fatalities and over 6800 injuries. Navigational accidents represent 53.1% of all casualties with ships as a combination of: grounding (16.6%), contact (16.3%) and collision (23.2%). Despite being slightly different, the rates of maritime navigation accidents are still tragically high according to marine casualty and pollution database collected by United States Coast Guard (USCG) and provided in July 2015 (not all 2014–2015 accidents reported) by marine information and safety and law reinforcement [4]. In a total of 34,540 reported and fully investigated navigation accidents between 2000 and mid 2015, around 43.5% of the accidents were groundings, 39.6% were allisions with a static object and 16.9% were collisions J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2020, 8, 5; doi:10.3390/jmse8010005 www.mdpi.com/journal/jmse J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2020, 8, 5 22 of of 19 object and 16.9% were collisions as demonstrated in Figure 1. A high-level risk analysis on passenger as demonstrated in Figure1. A high-level risk analysis on passenger ship collisions presented in ship collisions presented in Reference [5] suggested that risk control options related to navigation Reference [5] suggested that risk control options related to navigation should be considered to reduce should be considered to reduce the overall risk of collision and that navigational aspects are the overall risk of collision and that navigational aspects are important. important. 1400 Grounding Allision 1200 Collision s t 1000 n e d i c 800 c a f o r 600 e b m u 400 N 200 0 2000 2005 2010 2015 Year Figure 1. Investigated navigation accidents in USA 2000–2015. Data was from Reference [4]. Figure 1. Investigated navigation accidents in USA 2000–2015. Data was from Reference [4]. 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