Assessing Grounding Frequency using Ship Traffic and Waterway Complexity

Ship traffic is the factor that presents in almost all of the existing grounding risk models. It is considered to be one of the main factors affecting the expected frequency of ship groundings. This is mostly accepted by experts as common sense. However, there is no research available on the actual dependency between ship traffic and grounding accidents. In this paper, we conduct a study aimed at determining the statistical dependency between the density and distribution of traffic, the number and frequency of grounding accidents and the dependency between the complexity of waterways and an actual accident. For this purpose we utilise statistical analysis of maritime traffic, obtained from Automatic Identification System (AIS) data and grounding accidents, enhanced with the expert elicitation techniques delivering the waterway complexity index. The sea area under investigation is the Gulf of Finland. The results show statistical dependency between frequency of grounding and waterway complexity as well as the traffic distribution. However, the study does not reveal any significant dependency between grounding and traffic density.