Maritime Traffic Probabilistic Forecasting Based on Vessels’ Waterway Patterns and Motion Behaviors

Maritime traffic prediction is critical for ocean transportation safety management. In this paper, we propose a novel knowledge assisted methodology for maritime traffic forecasting based on a vessel’s waterway pattern and motion behavior. The vessel’s waterway pattern is extracted through a proposed lattice-based DBSCAN algorithm that significantly reduces the problem scale, and its motion behavior is quantitatively modeled for the first time using kernel density estimation. The proposed methodology facilitates the knowledge extraction, storage, and retrieval, allowing for seamless knowledge transfer to support maritime traffic forecasting. By incorporating both the vessel’s waterway pattern and motion behavior knowledge, our solution suggests a set of probable coordinates with the corresponding probability as the forecasting output. The proposed forecasting algorithm is capable of accurately predicting maritime traffic 5, 30, and 60 min ahead, while its computation can be efficiently completed in milliseconds for single vessel prediction. Owing to such a high computational efficiency, an extensive predictive analysis of hundreds of vessels has been reported for the first time in this paper. A web-based prototype platform is implemented for Singapore waters to demonstrate the solution’s feasibility in a real-world maritime operation system. The proposed approaches can be generalized for other marine waters around the world.