Use of Encounter Model for Collision Risk Assessment of Yangtze River

As China's largest and the world's busiest inland river, the sustainable development and navigational safety of Yangtze River are widely concerned by various parties. However, with the national development of the Middle and Western parts of China, the throughput as well as the passing ships of Yangtze River has been increasing rapidly during the past few decades. Collisions, groundings, overturns, oil-spills, fires, and other accidents have occurred repeatedly and caused serious consequences. In view of this, this paper examines collision risk assessment on the Yangtze River. The research presented a collision risk assessment approach which is based on a novel ship encounter model. This model considers the historical and the current traffic conditions as well as the environmental features, which could be used for evaluation and prediction of collision risk. Finally, the collision risk of the main route of Yangtze River was evaluated as an example.