Marine Navigation Collision Preventing System

This study developed a decision‐making support system (DMSS) for automatically determining the route priority of vessels entering/exiting the waters surrounding the port monitored by vessel traffic services (VTS). The developed DMSS was combined with marine geographic information systems (GIS), automatic identification systems (AIS), and fuzzy logic theory. The simulations of case studies for the ports of Keelung and Singapore were shown to illustrate the fitness of the developed DMSS. Based on the vessel information received/transmitted by AIS within the waters monitored by VTS, the developed DMSS can compute and output the route priority values for the captains on board and the operators in VTS stations as a point of reference. In other words, each ship in the waters surrounding the port can know the route priority for entering/exiting the port. The simulation results of case studies showed that the developed DMSS seems promising. The developed DMSS could be a useful tool in improving a port's navigation safety.

Background/Objectives: Ship trajectories in Vessel Traffic Service (VTS) system are generated by integrating the Automatic Identification System (AIS) or Radar system. However, the AIS system has missing data section caused by AIS device problems, radio jamming, and so on. These data have been confusing ship navigators and VTS operators.Methods/Statistical analysis: In order to extract missing AIS data, time intervals of sequent points from each ship trajectory are calculated. The section with missing AIS data is above a threshold time limit defined by characteristics. Using k-means algorithm, missing AIS data were clustered into several clusters stored by ship’s ID and sailing direction. Using association rule mining analysis, meaningful association pattern were calculated by missing AIS dataset.Findings: As a result of the association rule mining, we found several missing AIS situation patterns. In case of the west route, the probability of missing AIS situation is high when they enter the east and passenger routes. Also, the probability of missing AIS situation of passing the passenger route is high when that ship enter the LNG, east and west routes.Improvements/Applications: These results can be used to predict the probability of missing AIS data in VTS system.

선박교통류 평가는 대상해역 해상교통특성 파악을 통하여 정량화된 체계화된 교통관리를 수행함으로써 해양사고를 예방하는데 중요하다. 해상교통류의 특성은 선박자동식별장치(AIS, Automatic Identification System)가 선박에 설치됨에 따라 이 장치에서 수신된 정보를 토대로 평가할 수 있다. 본 연구에서는 해상교통관제센터(VTS, Vessel Traffic Services)에서 선박으로부터 수집된 위치, 속력, 침로, 시간 정보로부터 항로상에 해상교통류를 평가하기 위한 시뮬레이터를 구현하였다. 그 결과 해상교통관제센터에서 수집된 데이터로부터 선박 통항량, 통항분포, 선박속력분포, 기하학적 충돌빈도가 계산되어 표시된다. 이러한 해상교통류평가 평가는 해상교통관제사가 해상교통관리의 관점에서 해상안전을 위한 서비스를 제공하는데 유효하게 활용될 수 있을 것으로 사료된다. Maritime traffic assessment is important to understand the characteristics of maritime traffic and to prevent maritime accidents. The maritime traffic assessment can be calculated from the ship trajectory data observed by using AIS(Automatic Identification System). This paper developes a maritime traffic assessment tool using ship's position and speed, course, time data from ships navigating waterways. The results are represented in terms of the number of traffic quantity and traffic distribution, speed distribution, geometric collision candidates. The developed tool will contributes to advance maritime traffic safety by VTS(Vessel Traffic Services).

Development of a Gridded Maritime Traffic DB for e-Navigation

Maritime traffic pattern extraction is a fundamental and crucial factor for maritime surveillance and anomaly detection. Emerging technologies like Automatic Identification System (AIS) provides multi-dimensional data which is used to construct a maritime traffic model. In this paper, we propose a framework of maritime traffic pattern extraction from vessel AIS information, which learns a traffic pattern using an unsupervised technique, and can be applied on historical Automatic Identification System data. AIS data is a kind of spatio-temporal data that contains information of location data, as well as time stamps. In this way, traffic pattern is described by AIS data. Furthermore, we conduct a simulation experiment that extracts traffic pattern from the AIS data through the unsupervised technique. The proposed framework takes advantage of AIS data, which is a type of the spatiotemporal data that consists of vessel motion information, to perform the experiment. The result shows that the unsupervised framework converts useful information from raw AIS data to effective traffic pattern. The proposed method strongly supports the further research on maritime traffic pattern extraction of AIS data. Besides, an overview of the framework and the unsupervised technique for high-level maritime situation awareness is presented.

This paper presents an intellectual decision making system for the vessel traffic service (VTS). Its aim is to increase the safety and efficiency of the traffic and the effectiveness of VTS. In general, the navigational decision making process in a traffic control system is based on radar and navigation information although other systems, such as automatic identification systems, GPS can be used with good effect. The application of an intellectual component during a decision making process increases safety and economic effects of the shipping as well as reduces the operator's workload.

This paper describes the application method of bumper area defined in the ship domain theory and it is to identify risky sectors in VTS(Vessel Traffic Services) area. The final goal of this work is to develop early warning system providing the location information with high traffic risks in Mokpo VTS area and to prevent the human errors of VTS Officer(VTSO). The current goal of this paper is to find evaluation and detection method of risky sectors. The ratio between overlapped bumper area of each vessels and the summing area of a designated sector, Ratio to Evaluate Risk(RER) <TEX>${\gamma}$</TEX> is used as one of evaluation and detection parameter. The usability of overlapped bumper area is testified through three kinds of scenarios for various traffic situations. The marine traffic data used in the experiments is collected by AIS(Automatic Identification System) receiver and then compiled in the SQL(Structured Query Language) Server. Through the analysis of passing vessel's tracks within the boundary of Mokpo VTS area, the total of 11 sectors are identified as evaluation unit sector. As experiment results from risk evaluation for the 11 sectors, it is clearly known that the proposed method with RER <TEX>${\gamma}$</TEX> can provide the location information of high risky sectors which are need to keep traffic tracks of vessel movements and to maintain traffic monitoring by VTSO.

This is a combination of YOLO (you only look once) target recognition detection algorithm and AIS (Automatic Identification System) automatic ship identification system to assist vessels in inland navigation to carry out vessels and obstacle avoidance. This system proposes a ship-assisted collision avoidance system for ship collision accidents caused by a narrow inland waterway and complex navigation channel. The system can process the image and video information acquired by the high-definition camera mounted on the ship, and frame and mark the ships in the current sea area, and combine the AIS system to realize the visualization of the ship information and improve the global view. The experiment shows that the system can effectively identify and frame the ship and realize the visualization of AIS information, and the transformed image and video information can be used for decision-making by the ship's driver.

The AIS (Automatic Identification System) became a standard under the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea (SOLAS) in December 2001. Using the AIS transponder, the vessel will report its position, identity heading and other information to other ship traffic in the same area. The AIS is a significant contribution to the control and safety of shipping. Transport Canada (TC) is a pioneer internationally in using the AIS (R4A airborne AIS transponder) integrated with the remote sensing system (MSS 6000 from Swedish Space Corporation) on board their aircraft, in order to add the information on ship identity and voyage to the information from other sensors. The AIS integration provides a quantum leap in the effectiveness of the surveillance mission. In the Canadian system integration, detailed vessel information obtained through the AIS system is displayed and correlated with information received from other sensors. All information is also presented together with a high-resolution digital map including nautical chart data. The AIS provides the operators with vessel voyage and identity information. It is very useful for vectoring the aircraft to areas where ships have been reported. The advent of AIS simplifies surveillance procedures and makes each hour of surveillance more productive. During last year TC reported that over 9700 vessels were over flown. It is anticipated that over 20,000 AIS targets will be acquired using AIS in 2007–2008. The experience from Canada also indicates an outstanding VHF range. During missions, vessels have been identified as far away as 200 nautical miles (n.m.) from the aircraft. The AIS information together with other sensor images gives a comprehensive image that will dramatically improve the chance to tie a ship to a detected illegal oil spill. Receiving ship identity information will enable aircrews to conduct covert operations and contact the suspect ship from far standoff distances. This will also act as a deterrent to potential polluters. Integrating AIS within the operational requirements of surveillance programs, dedicated to minimizing the adverse effects of shipping on the marine environment, will make a significant contribution towards improving the effectiveness of surveillance missions.

국제해사기구(International Maritime Organization, IMO)에서는 선박의 해상 충돌을 방지하기 위하여 SOLAS의 요구조건에 따라 모든 선박에 대하여 선박자동식별장치(Automatic Identification System, AIS)를 의무적으로 장착하도록 권고하고 있다. AIS를 사용하면 타선에 대한 제원 및 항행정보의 획득이 가능하여 충돌방지뿐만 아니라 광역관제, 조난 선박의 탐색구조 등 안전관리에도 활용이 가능하다. 본 논문에서는 AIS 장비를 사용하여 ADS-B (Automatic Dependent Surveillance - Broadcast) 개념 기반의 항공감시용 송수신기를 구현한 결과에 대하여 살펴보도록 한다. 기본적으로 AIS는 해상에서 사용되기 때문에 고도 정보를 사용하지 않지만, AIS 장비 내부에 사용하는 GPS (Global Positioning System) 칩셋에서 제공하는 고도 정보의 추출이 가능하다. 고도 정보를 포함한 감시 메시지 형식을 정의하고, SOTDMA (Self-Organizing Time Division Multiple Access) 방식을 개선하여 ADS-B 송수신기를 구현하였다. 적용 결과를 확인하기 위하여 지상시험 및 비행시험을 수행하였다. International Maritime Organization (IMO) recommends the installation of an Automatic Identification System (AIS) according to requirements by SOLAS to avoid maritime collision. AIS provides traffic information of other ships that may be used for maritime traffic control, SAR (Search and Rescue) and collision avoidance to apply safety management. In this paper, preliminary results to implement an aeronautical surveillance transceiver using AIS transceiver based on ADS-B concepts are described. Although altitude information is not required for AIS since the AIS is operated at MSL (Mean Sea Level), altitude information can be extracted by a GPS (Global Positioning System) chip-set in the AIS transceiver. ADS-B transceiver is implemented by defining a surveillance message format including the altitude information and modifying SOTDMA (Self-Organizing Time Division Multiple Access) protocol. Ground tests and flight tests are performed to validate the implementation results.

The purpose of this Coastal and Hydraulics Engineering technical note (CHETN) is to propose a list of candidate sites along the Ohio River for the installation of Automatic Identification System (AIS) shoreside towers within the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Lock Operations Management Application (LOMA) program. The LOMA program manages a network of terrestrial (shoreside) AIS sites (Figure 1) and vessel-mounted AIS sites with receive and transmit capability. However, there are known limits to the reception and transmission areas served by existing shoreside towers (referred to as “coverage gaps”) along the Ohio River (DiJoseph et al. 2021). Parties interested in improving AIS coverage to enhance maritime domain awareness and navigational safety along the Ohio River may wish to pursue the installation of LOMA program hardware for this purpose.

The Automatic Identification System (AIS) is a ship reporting system based on messages broadcast by vessels carrying an AIS transponder. The recent increase of terrestrial networks and satellite constellations of receivers is making AIS one of the main sources of information for Maritime Situational Awareness activities. Nevertheless, AIS is subject to reliability and manipulation issues; indeed, the received reports can be unintentionally incorrect, jammed or deliberately spoofed. Moreover, the system can be switched off to cover illicit operations, causing the interruption of AIS reception. This paper addresses the problem of detecting whether a shortage of AIS messages represents an alerting situation or not, by exploiting the Received Signal Strength Indicator available at the AIS Base Stations (BS). In designing such an anomaly detector, the electromagnetic propagation conditions that characterize the channel between ship AIS transponders and BS have to be taken into consideration. The first part of this work is thus focused on the experimental investigation and characterisation of coverage patterns extracted from the real historical AIS data. In addition, the paper proposes an anomaly detection algorithm to identify intentional AIS on-off switching. The presented methodology is then illustrated and assessed on a real-world dataset.

With the enormous amount of information provided by the ship Automatic Identification System (AIS), AIS is now playing a significant role in maritime transport system-related research and development. Many kinds of research and industrial applications are based on the ship trajectory extracted from raw AIS data. However, due to the issues of equipment, the transmission environment, and human factors, the raw AIS data inevitably contain abnormal messages, which have hindered the utilization of such information in practice. Thus, in this paper, an anomaly detection method that focuses on AIS trajectory is proposed, making comprehensive use of the kinematic information of the ship in the AIS data. The method employs three steps to obtain non-error AIS trajectories: (1) data preprocessing, (2) kinematic estimation, and (3) error clustering. It should be noted that steps (2) and (3) are involved in an iterative process to determine all of the abnormal data. A case study is then conducted to test the proposed method on real-world AIS data, followed by a comparison between the proposed method and the rule-based anomaly detection method. As the processed trajectories show fewer abnormal features, the results indicate that the method improves performance and can accurately detect as much abnormal data as possible.

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS), today the primary mean for Position, Navigation and Timing (PNT) information on-board of a vessel, are highly vulnerable to unintentional and intentional interference like jamming or spoofing. Therefore, maritime community seeks for an alternative system to compensate this thread and follow the vision of the eNavigation strategy of International Maritime Organization (IMO), a safe navigation of vessels from berth to berth. The only alternative terrestrial backup for GNSS is the enhanced LOng-RAnge Navigation (eLORAN). However, that system will probably never reach global coverage because a substantial part of LORAN stations was shutdown in the years 2010 to 2015. There are only certain regions where it is still usable as well as Chayka, the Russian system. Today, in case of a temporal loss of GNSS no system can provide absolute positioning in areas with increased necessity for reliable navigation data provision on a global scale. One candidate for a terrestrial backup system is R(anging)-Mode which utilizes existing maritime radio infrastructure for the broadcast of modified signals, which allow distance estimation to the transmitter. First feasibility studies were done in the North Sea, in China and in South Korea. The Baltic Sea is due to the high number of vessels along the shipping routes and its sensitive marine ecosystem a suitable region for the implementation and testing of R-Mode firstly as a terrestrial backup system to GNSS. It will supplement navigation information in order to reduce the risk of collisions and groundings. New marine applications that require a continuous provision of position information will be made possible at sea, in coastal areas and in harbours. A consortium of 12 research institutions, administrations and industry of Germany, Poland, Sweden and Norway is currently engaged to setup the first R-Mode testbed, which utilizes IALA (International Association of Marine Aids to Navigation and Lighthouse Authorities) beacons and Automatic Identification System (AIS) land stations for the broadcast of R-Mode enabled signals. This will be organized in the southern Part of the Baltic Sea until 2020 funded by EU within the scope of R-Mode Baltic Project. Beside this main goal of the Project (back-up to GNSS) further research and development activities will be conducted. This comprises the selection of most suitable way of R-Mode service implementation on IALA beacon and AIS signals without disruption of the legacy service. Further the selection of best algorithms for positioning either with only one type of R-Mode signals or with both is part of the research activities. In addition a concept development and test installation for the time synchronization of a transnational network of R-Mode stations which is currently maintained by independent national maritime administrations as well as the development of first prototypes of R-Mode receiver capable to cope with modified IALA beacons and/or AIS signals as well as R-Mode base station hardware for R-Mode signal generation is planned. Finally, with R-Mode enabled PNT data processing and Pilot Plug Unit the first two R-Mode applications will be made available. All this activities will be done in close contact with the maritime administrations, IALA, and maritime users. It is anticipated, that R-Mode will be a terrestrial backup system that can fulfil their need for robust and reliable PNT data for safe navigation at sea. Beside a general description of the project first results of a common coverage prediction for the IALA beacon and AIS communication channels for the Baltic Sea region will be estimated and presented. Latter shows that especially the relevant Baltic Sea region with its narrow passages of coastlines in the North (Denmark, Norway and Sweden) and in the South (Germany, Poland) is already well equipped with a dense network of IALA beacons and AIS stations in the vicinity of vessel routes. In case of positive Project results, upgrading all of them to R-Mode service level these would allow positioning in the entire region. Furthermore, the output of the requirement phase study on the R-Mode system and its components is presented. This was done starting from relevant documents of IMO and IALA requirements for a terrestrial backup system were extracted and next further broken down for specific components of the R-Mode system. This shall give guidance throughout the project when selecting appropriate algorithms, methods and technical solutions.

Vessel losses of command (e.g., propulsion, electrical power, or steering failure) can serve as the initiating event for significant maritime accidents, such as grounding. It is therefore important to estimate the frequency of such events for navigational risk assessments. Despite the existence of previous studies, new data have become available that may reveal more precise and useful information for risk estimations and accident prevention. This paper analyzes two databases of vessel losses of command within Norway’s economic exclusive area over a five year period. The study utilizes a novel database of incidents observed by the Norwegian Coastal Administration’s (NCA) Vessel Traffic Services (VTS), in addition to incidents reported to IHS Markit over the same five year period. Automatic identification system (AIS) data is used to construct activity metrics of vessel activity, which are used to compute vessel loss of command incidence rates for ship types. To account for under-reporting, capture–recapture methods are used to calculate adjusted incidence-rates. The duration of each incident is recorded and used to construct distributions of repair times. Probabilities of towing and anchoring are computed for ship types and incident location. The results indicate that previous studies may have underestimated the incidence of vessel loss of command. Using the best-case scenario, cargo ships and tankers suffer losses of command more frequently than other ship types. Significant under-reporting of losses of command was observed in the IHS Markit database.