A novel arena-based regional collision risk assessment method of multi-ship encounter situation in complex waters

Aiming at the problem that it is difficult to accurately quantify ship regional collision risk under multi-ship encounter situation in complex waters, this paper proposes a novel arena-based regional ship collision risk assessment method that combines density clustering and multiple influence factors in respect to ship arena in complex waters. Firstly, the DBSCAN is used to cluster the position of the ship, and obtain the spatial distribution of the clusters of encounter ships (CES). Then considering the influence factors of DCPA, TCPA and relative bearing (RB) from the perspective of ship arena, the calculation function of ship regional collision risk is established, the comprehensive ship regional collision risk calculation model considering multiple factors is synthesized. In order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, the method has been applied to the west coast of Sweden waters. We have also conducted comparative analysis with the existed study, the results show that the proposed regional collision risk assessment considering the additional impact factors of RB can more effectively and accurately identify the ships with high collision risk. This paper provides a theoretical basis for shore-based safety surveillance center for autonomous ships in complex waters. •A novel arena-based regional ship collision risk assessment method is proposed.•The DBSCAN is used to obtain the spatial distribution of the clusters of encounter ships.•The factors of DCPA, TCPA and relative bearing are considered in the proposed method.•The proposed method can more accurately identify multi-ship collision risk under the influence of relative bearing.