SHIP ROUTING IN THE BLACK SEA BASED ON DIJKSTRA ALGORITHM.

In the precursory section of the paper, the authors succinctly present the Black Sea basin's oceanographic features with a focus on factors that can lead to naval accidents. The Black Sea basin is characterized, especially in winter months, by sudden storms, big waves, and winds, seriously affecting the ships and crews' safety. The said basin has also confined areas with pleasure crafts and commercial ships, offshore platforms with accompanying auxiliary fleet and underwater pipes and installations or shallow waters, and wrecks all of them favoring naval accidents. The naval accidents can lead to the dramatic loss of human lives, damage or loss of property and negatively impact on the marine environment. In the paper, we establish a model based on realistic wind and wave conditions present in the Black Sea and analyze the output given by an adapted Dijkstra algorithm. The authors set a study area, from the whole Black Sea basin, chose a specific region, split it into squares, and the algorithm found the potential waypoints of the recommended path as the vertexes of the established squares. Finding the optimal route between two ports being the most efficient from an economic point of view, reduced emissions, and the safety of the crew and the ship is the main objective of the paper. Usually, the routing algorithms apply longer routes considerably. The proposed algorithm was meant to assist shipmasters' and owners' decisions and minimize fuel consumption by choosing the shortest and safest path related to shipping and sea conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]