Understanding the Spatiotemporal Patterns of Cross Encounter Behaviour of Ships Based on Automatic Identification System Data

The purpose of this research is to extract the trajectories of the crossing encounters of ships from the massive data from the Automatic Identification System (AIS) and to further identify the behavioural change points for an in-depth analysis of the behaviour of the ship and relative motions during crossing encounters. We selected AIS data from the sea area near Qingdao Port as the research object and applied the open window algorithm and the difference algorithm to obtain the behavioural characteristics of the crossing encounter trajectories that occur in the warning area and the waterway. By quantitatively analysing the relationship between the feature points and the closest point of the crossing encounters, we can gain insight into the behaviour dynamics of the ship during the whole crossing encounter process. By analysing the relative motion process and the state of motion, we provide strong support for safer maritime transportation.