System-Level Simulation of Maritime Traffic in Northern Baltic Sea

Maritime traffic in winter in the Baltic Sea (particularly the northern part) is challenged by heavy ice formation. Icebreaker ships that can provide assistance are a limited resource that need to be shared among all ships. Decision-making for winter navigation systems thus involves monitoring several parameters at both operational and system level, including multiple stochastic parameters. This work presents an integration of ice characteristics, operational level details of ships, and system level details such as traffic flows and icebreaker scheduling through a simulation framework. At the core is a discrete-event simulation model that mimics winter traffic flows in varying ice conditions obtained through meteorological data. This work brings in the novel combination of using ship-level research (operability of individual ships in different ice conditions) as an input in deriving vessel speeds for modelling traffic flows for system-level optimization.