Agent-based Modelling and Big Data: Applications for Maritime Traffic Analysis

Agent based modeling (ABM) is a powerful tool for examining complex systems in many scientific applications, including maritime transport systems. Growing demands for freight transport and increased industry emphasis on reducing environmental impacts have heightened the focus on vessel and port efficiency. This research aimed to create a maritime route planning model to simulate vessel movement in all waterways. The goal of the ship routing model developed in this research was to develop a simulation tool capable of reproducing real world shipping routes useful for navigation planning, with emphasis on port scheduling and potential application for further use and exploration. A modified breadth-first search algorithm was implemented as a NetLogo ABM in this research. With increasing volumes of ship location monitoring data, new approaches are now possible for examining performance-based metrics and to improve simulations with more precise verification and analysis. A Satellite Automatic Identification System dataset with over 500,000 vessel logs travelling across the Pacific Ocean and into the Port of Metro Vancouver was used as the focal area for model development and validation in this study. Automatic identification system (AIS) is the global standard for maritime navigation and traffic management, and data derived from AIS messages can be used for calibrating simulation model scenarios. In this analysis, the results examined how changes in simulation parameters alter route choice behaviour and how effective large AIS datasets are for validating and calibrating model results. Using large AIS datasets, model results can be quantified to examine how closely they resemble real-time vessels in the same region. Heatmaps provide a data visualization tool that effectively uses large data sets and calculates how closely model results resemble AIS data from the same region. In the case of PMV, the Maritime Ship Routing Model (MSRM) was able to replicate path likeness with a high level of accuracy, generating realistic navigation paths between the many islands on the eastern side of southern Vancouver Island, B.C., a busy marine traffic region and sensitive ecological area. This research highlights the use of ABM as a powerful, user-friendly tool for developing maritime shipping models useful for port scheduling and route analysis. The results of this study emphasize the use of large data sets that are applicable, clean, and reliable as a crucial source for validating and calibrating the MSRM

A comparative analysis of two types of piracy :Iranian / Iraqi piracy in the Arabian Gulf and Somali piracy in the Indian Ocean

PhD ThesisThis thesis is an investigation into maritime piracy in the Arabian Gulf and Somalia with a practical objective of understanding the drivers underpinning piracy behaviour to aid identifying how best to deal with this issue. Maritime piracy is a complicated crime which is unique in every region. The main findings from empirical data collected using face-to-face semi-structured interviews (n = 43 undertaken between 2012 and 2013 in Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Nairobi and Mombasa) showed that pirates could be categorized according to different strategies adopted in attacking ships: pirates in the Arabian Gulf applied hit and run techniques, while Somalis’ pirates adopted a kidnap for ransom approach. While both sets of pirates seek money as a reward, the question is why do Iraqi and Iranian pirates steal cash and valuables, whereas Somali pirates focus on ransom? In this thesis, the resultant analyses identified that motive is not the main key for forming the pirates’ chosen strategy - whether the motive is political, ideological or purely financial is not critical to the method selected. The reasons for the different strategies adopted by the pirates are manifold, however, three main variables emerged from the analyses: geographical advantage; state failure or success; and illegal fishing by foreign vessels. These three factors must be applied all together in order to trigger the kidnap-for-ransom strategy. In the Arabian Gulf, there is no illegal fishing or state failure, which suggests that Iraqi and Iranian pirates do not kidnap for ransom, whereas Somalia exhibits all three factors at the same time. Studying these and other factors by a combination of fieldwork and documentary analysis has led to a new understanding of why different kinds of maritime piracy have arisen in the geographical areas researched, and the research presented herein offers new contextual evidence that could help the different regions decide how best to tackle the different types of piracy. These findings and the methods employed may also have potential application in other parts of the world where piracy is a problem of potential risk