MODELING OPTIMAL COLREGS-BASED NAVIGATIONAL PATHS IN PORT WATERS

摘要

The International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGs) have been widely discussed in collision risk assessment and studies on collision avoidance. However, most of these studies focused on two-ship collision avoidance in a close range rather than seek an optimization of the navigational paths among multiple interacting ships. Moreover, several constraints, such as fairway limits are seldom considered. This paper proposes an evolutionary model to obtain optimal collision-avoidance paths of ships navigating in confined waterways. The innovative model will consider safety constraints due to port configuration and traffic movements, as well as economic and operational objectives of navigators, and regulatory requirements in COLREGs. In addition, the model takes into account time constraints for ships with allocated arrival schedules. The model is illustrated by an example of ships entering or leaving the Singapore port, including a scheduled passenger cruise ship arriving at the Cruise Center.