A Molecular Dynamics Approach to Identify the Marine Traffic Complexity in a Waterway

With the rapid development of the shipping industry in recent years, the increasing volume of ship traffic makes marine traffic much busier and more crowded, especially in the waterway off the coast. This leads to the increment of the complexity level of marine traffic and poses more threats to marine traffic safety. In order to study marine traffic safety under the conditions of increasing complexity, this article proposed a marine traffic complexity model based on the method in molecular dynamics. The model converted ship traffic to a particle system and identified the traffic complexity by analyzing the radial distribution of dynamic and spatial parameters of ships in a Euclid plane. The effectiveness of the proposed model had been validated by the case studies in the waters of Bohai Strait with real AIS (Automatic Identification System) data and simulated data. The results show that the proposed model can evaluate the marine traffic complexity more sufficiently and accurately. The proposed model is helpful for marine surveillance operators to monitor and organize marine traffic under complex situations so as to improve marine traffic safety.