A cellular automaton model for ship traffic flow in waterways

With the development of marine traffic, waterways become congested and more complicated traffic phenomena in ship traffic flow are observed. It is important and necessary to build a ship traffic flow model based on cellular automata (CAs) to study the phenomena and improve marine transportation efficiency and safety. Spatial discretization rules for waterways and update rules for ship movement are two important issues that are very different from vehicle traffic. To solve these issues, a CA model for ship traffic flow, called a spatial–logical mapping (SLM) model, is presented. In this model, the spatial discretization rules are improved by adding a mapping rule. And the dynamic ship domain model is considered in the update rules to describe ships’ interaction more exactly. Take the ship traffic flow in the Singapore Strait for example, some simulations were carried out and compared. The simulations show that the SLM model could avoid ship pseudo lane-change efficiently, which is caused by traditional spatial discretization rules. The ship velocity change in the SLM model is consistent with the measured data. At finally, from the fundamental diagram, the relationship between traffic ability and the lengths of ships is explored. The number of ships in the waterway declines when the proportion of large ships increases.