Analysis of the marine traffic safety in the Gulf of Finland

The Gulf of Finland (GOF) is geographically situated between Finland and Estonian waters. The seafloor varies between deep and shallow and a number of underwater rocks exist in the Finnish archipelago area. The marine traffic has been growing fast during the last years in this area, especially due to the rapid increase of the transportation of various cargoes to Russia and the transport of oil from Russia. In this paper the safety of the marine traffic in the GOF area is analysed. First a detail accident statistics during the last 10 years are described and thereafter the risk of ship collisions is studied by theoretical modelling in two locations. Finally the results of the theoretical models are compared with actual accident statistics. The results reveal that grounding is the dominating accident type in these waters and typically about 11 groundings take place annually, of which about one is a tanker grounding. For collision the highest risks are caused by the passenger ship/RoPax ships traffic between Helsinki and Tallinn together with the high traffic intensity eastwards/westward to and from Russian harbours. The theoretical collision models give good results when compared with the accident statistics. AIS data is utilised in the theoretical models to calculate the geometric collision probabilities. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.