Developing a maritime safety index using fuzzy logics

Safe shipping is essential for society and different measures are taken to improve maritime safety, for example through implementation of traffic separation schemes, radar surveillance and traffic management concepts. But how can maritime safety be measured to determine the effects of those implementations? In this study, a real-time maritime safety index for a ship is developed, taking into account both the probability of grounding and the probability of collision. The index is developed using fuzzy integrated systems and validated in ship handling simulator scenarios. It uses numerical data from the simulator as an input to assess the present traffic situation from the perspective of a specific ship and outputs a comprehensive index. This paper describes the concept of sea traffic management as proposed and evaluated in the EU funded STM Validation project, the motivation for developing a maritime safety index, the numerical input variables and model properties and also validates the feasibility of the approach.