Analysis of Marine Traffic Feature for Safety Assessment at Southern Entrance of the Istanbul Strait-I
The Istanbul Strait is one of the important waterways in the world. And its southern entrance has a highly congested local traffic. Till now there are several studies regarding how the Istanbul Strait is dangerous to navigate and how those dangers can be mitigated. But there is no study regarding local traffic which is posing great collision risk. In a certain traffic area, marine traffic safety assessment parameters are traffic volume, frequency of collision avoidance maneuver, traffic density, traffic flow and potential encounter, In this paper local traffic volume, traffic flow and potential encounter number of local traffic vessels and possibility of collision are investigated in order to find degree of danger at the southern entrance of the Istanbul Strait. Finally by utilizing those, risky areas are determined for southern entrance of the Istanbul Strait. Results have been compared to a previous study regarding risk analysis at congested areas of the Istanbul Strait (Aydogdu, 2006) and consistency of the results were presented.