Mechanisms and legal instruments to ensure air route safety

The legal regulation of ensuring the safety of air traffic in general and of air routes in particular is one of the main concerns of specialists in the field of public international law. The principles and objectives, structure and organization of airspace for safe and efficient operation by analyzing the procedures for the formation and operation of air routes are the subject of this article. Airspace areas with special legal status are an important element of airspace regulation and the process of ensuring air route safety. The analysis of the normative provisions that contribute to ensuring the security of air routes, the risks and threats on the safety of these routes and the mechanisms for preventing and combating them are a priority for specialists in the field of international air law.

Classification method of marine target motion pattern based on spatial-temporal trajectories

Classifying the motion pattern of marine targets is of important significance to promote target surveillance and management efficiency of marine area and to guarantee sea route safety. This paper proposes a moving target classification algorithm model based on channel extraction-segmentation-LCSCA-lp norm minimization. The algorithm firstly analyzes the entire distribution of channels in specific region, and defines the categories of potential ship motion patterns; on this basis, through secondary segmentation processing method, it obtains several line segment trajectories as training sample sets, to improve the accuracy of classification algorithm; then, it further uses the Leastsquares Cubic Spline Curves Approximation (LCSCA) technology to represent the training sample sets, and builds a motion pattern classification sample dictionary; finally, it uses lp norm minimized sparse representation classification model to realize the classification of motion patterns. The verification experiment based on real spatial-temporal trajectory dataset indicates that, this method can effectively realize the motion pattern classification of marine targets, and shows better time performance and classification accuracy than other representative classification methods.

PRACTICAL FEATURES OF ECDIS SAFETY DEPTH CALCULATION

The safety of marine navigation in coastal areas and narrow waters, which account for 80% of total navigational accidents, remains a pressing concern. These circumstances indicate the need to improve traditional and automated methods of passage planning and control of navigation and traffic management processes, based on the assessment of the actual navigation accuracy and navigation safety parameters. According to current industry recommendations, the main parameters of safe navigation are safety depth, safety contour, permissible cross-track limit, and accuracy of position fixing. This study deals with the development of a general practical approach to the calculation of the safety depth, as one of the main safety parameters in the ECDIS system, with an increased focus on those aspects of calculation where navigators tend to make mistakes. Analysis of data obtained during the training on the ECDIS simulator for navigators directly involved in the passage planning process (master, navigation officer) showed systematic mistakes in assessing the route safety, which can lead to ship grounding in real world. At the same time, navigators often do not recognize the danger, misinterpret it or make mistakes when checking the passage plan for safety. The results of the competence assessment showed that 40% of masters and 30% of navigation officers make mistakes in calculating the safety depth. The most common mistakes are the incorrect application of category zones of confidence (CATZOC), miscalculation of the minimum depth on the route, miscalculation of the tide height, tidal window period, the neglect of corrections for increased draught due to roll and pitch. The paper suggests that the UKC (under keel clearance) company policy shall take into account the accuracy of chart information. Furthermore, the research further develops the method of calculating the safety depth, implemented in the software, which makes it possible to systematically assess the safety of a route with multiple legs with heterogeneous parameters.

Incorporating a Safety Index into Pathfinding

Travelers around the world are concerned with choosing not only the quickest route from one point to another but also the safest route. Traffic safety has always been a major public concern, and traffic safety performance should be constantly evaluated so that both reactive and proactive countermeasures can help reduce crashes. This study developed a methodology for incorporating safety aspects into travelers’ pathfinding process. The safe pathfinding process included two main parts: a route-specific safety hazard index and a route-finding algorithm that considered both travel time and safety. The ratio of the deceleration rate to avoid a crash to the maximum available deceleration rate was chosen as the proxy for traffic safety. The safety hazard index was formulated by using the collision mechanism along the roadway segment and at the intersection. Motorist-specific information (e.g., vehicle type, age, pavement condition) was also included in the safety index model so that a traveler’s individual needs could be considered. The pathfinding algorithm, which combined mobility and safety, had three objectives: shorter travel time, lower route safety hazard index, and avoidance of sites with the highest safety hazard index along the route. The methodology was applied in a real-world street network to demonstrate its use and prove the concept of finding a safe path.