Vessel manoeuvring hot zone recognition and traffic analysis with AIS data

Automatic identification systems (AIS) are on-board compulsory devices on ships that can provide a large amount of dynamic vessel information, such as position, course and speed information, which is meaningful for marine management. This paper explores the potential to utilize AIS data to recognize ship manoeuvring hot zones and analyse their characteristics to improve marine management efficiency. First, considering manoeuvring behaviours such as turning, acceleration and deceleration, a novel approach based on MiniBatchKMeans that recognizes ship turning hot zones, acceleration hot zones and deceleration hot zones is proposed according to course and speed variation. Second, joint probability density functions for speed over ground (SOG) and course over ground (COG) are built taking into account the combined influences of motion characteristics, which are beneficial for determining the ship traffic rules in manoeuvring hot zones and utilized in marine management. Finally, numerical and comparison experiments are conducted to test the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method. • The designed recognition algorithm can identify manoeuvring hot zone based on speed and course variations. • The established joint probability density distribution model is able to uncover ship traffic rules in manoeuvring hot zones. • The proposed methodology is effective in marine management.