Integration of a Geographic Information System and Evolutionary Computation for Automatic Routing in Coastal Navigation

Abstract

Suitable route planning is related to the safety and economy of navigation. However, route planning has become increasingly complex over the years and the planning process requires a large amount of oceanic environmental information. In order to use the oceanic environmental information effectively and improve the efficiency of route planning, this research employed a Geographic Information System (GIS) as the platform for enabling two-phase automatic route generation design. Firstly, through GIS's spatial data management, spatial analysis and geometric computation capability, the presence of the obstacle is detected and candidate routes are automatically generated. These are provided to the evolutionary algorithm as the basis for preliminary population calculation. Then, a specially designed evolutionary algorithm is used for route elimination to obtain the optimal route, resulting in the most-recommended routes that encompass safety and economy. This technique is more efficient than evolutionary computation techniques that use traditional random searches. At the same time, this targets safety and economy, providing a reference for developing a route planning strategy. K E Y

An Ant Colony Algorithm for efficient ship routing

“…Also, in this study the candidate routes that pass through obstacles was removed without integrating an obstacle avoidance mechanism (such as island avoidance navigation). A relevant coastal navigation routing technique, suggested by Tsou [23], could be added in the future so that the results might better satisfy requirements of real time navigation decision support and enhance the energy conservation effect.…”

“…With the development of artificial intelligence and the maturing of evolutionary computation technology, more and more researchers investigate model organism optimization by using evolutionary computation technology (for example: genetic algorithms (GA), ant colony algorithms (ACA) and particle swarm optimization) and apply it to route planning solutions. Tsou [22,23], Smierzchalski and Michalewicz, [18] and Ito et al [9] used the GA in the planning of collision avoidance and coastal navigation paths and gained very good results. The present research used the ACA as the research method, emulating ants' forage path finding behaviour, and applied it to search an optimum route.…”

Real-time risk of ship structures integrating structural health monitoring data: Application to multi-objective optimal ship routing

“…Routing optimization is a well-established topic that has been deeply investigated in the past (Spaans, 1985;Hagiwara, 1989;Bijlsma, 2008;Szłapczynska and Smierzchalski, 2009;Bijlsma, 2010;Fagerholt et al, 2010;Tsou, 2010;Papatzanakis et al, 2012;Chang et al, 2013). Generally, ships may be in danger when their stability and/or structural capacity are compromised.…”

“…Lastly, an application on optimal short range routing of ships is developed considering risk as the main performance indicator. Ship routing is an important and interesting part of ship management (Journée and Meijers, 1980;Spaans, 1985;Brown et al, 1987;Hagiwara, 1989;Bijlsma, 2008;Szłapczynska and Smierzchalski, 2009;Hinnenthal, 2008;Dolinskaya et al, 2009;Bijlsma, 2010;Fagerholt et al, 2010;Tsou, 2010;Papatzanakis et al, 2012;Chang et al, 2013;Decò and Frangopol, 2013). SHM and weather prediction are considered within the proposed optimization framework, with objectives being the minimization of the estimated time of arrival (ETA), minimization of mean total risk, and minimization of the fuel cost.…”

Clustering Bathymetric Data for Electronic Navigational Charts

“…Aspects of ENC production planning and navigational data evaluation have been examined by many researchers, e.g. Hyla et al (2015), Janowski et al (2014), Liu et al (2014), Kazimierski and Stateczny (2015), Przyborski (2002), Tsou (2010), Ye et al (2014). ENCs are produced according to the strict S-57 standard enforced by the International Hydrographic Organization (IHO) and are visualised by means of the Electronic Chart Display and Information System (ECDIS).…”