Stay the Course: Leveraging Maritime Traffic Patterns to Predict... - Sean, Alexandros, & Christos

Stay the Course: Leveraging Maritime Traffic Patterns to Predict Future Behavior
Sean Kohlbrenner, Alexandros Troupiotis-Kapeliaris, and Christos Kastrisios, The Center for Coastal and Ocean Mapping
Sudden changes in a vessel's path are common, complicating efforts to predict future behavior. In this work, we leverage existing traffic to develop an algorithm that makes informed trajectory predictions. Our method begins with analyzing historical maritime traffic using AIS data from vessels in southern New England. This analysis culminates in creating representative trajectories of this data that are validated against nautical charts. The algorithm matches a given path to these trajectories and uses them to model their behavior. This developing effort aims to reduce the cognitive load for mariners and support autonomous navigation efforts by predicting the probable movement of nearby vessels and their future waypoints.
This presentation was made at the 2023 annual meeting of the North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS). For more information on NACIS, check out NACIS.org.