The shipping industry will soon be able to perform better socio-economic analyses

A fairway improvement usually means fewer accidents. How much money does that save society? Today, the question is difficult to answer, but in a project financed by the Swedish Transport Administration, the first step has been taken in the development of a model that can perform socio-economic analyzes for shipping.

When various measures are carried out in shipping, for example in the case of waterway improvements and the introduction of various regulations, socio-economic analyzes are carried out.

“The problem is that today we have no good method for that, which means that it is difficult for the Swedish Maritime Administration and others to make assessments about the safety benefits of planned changes”, says Henrik Sjöstrand, senior investigator at VTI and one of the authors behind the report Intensity and severity of ship conflicts – An AIS based approach

One reason why it is so difficult to make assessments is that there are very few accidents in shipping (compared to, for example, road traffic). In addition, there are large omissions in Transport analyses statistics on maritime accidents. When they do happen, however, they are often very serious.

“But since it is difficult to estimate accident risks, it is also difficult to say anything about the socio-economic consequences of various changes. Until now, expert assessments and ship simulations have mainly been used, but in a previous study we saw that there is a tendency to overestimate the risk of accidents.”

By collecting AIS data (raw data from the Automatic Identification System that identifies ship movements), Henrik Sjöstrand and his colleagues have been able to calculate how often "conflicts", i.e. encounters between vessels that could lead to an accident occur.

“The traffic intensity has then been multiplied by the severity of the conflicts on a scale between 1 and 5. In a way, we have come up with a measure of the accident risk and we have done a case study in the Gothenburg archipelago.”

The idea is that a simple model should be created where authorities and others who do socio-economic analyzes should be able to insert different values, for example traffic intensity, number of ships, type of ship, speed, safety distance, etc., and both estimate accident risks and monetary consequences. But you are not there yet.

“The different degrees of seriousness that we have developed do not really say more than that 5 is more dangerous than 4 and 4 is more dangerous than 3. You can say that what we have developed is a basic idea that needs to be filled with more content and adjusted. We have to add variables that affect the risk of accidents and put pennies on what the various situations would cost if they resulted in an accident. It involves valuing everything from deaths to ship damage and oil spills.”

This will be done within the framework of the project SEAS (Socioeconomic analyzes for sea transport), which has just been granted funding from the Swedish Transport Administration and which runs until November 2026.

The report Intensity and severity of ship conflicts – An AIS-based approach has been written by: Gunnar Flötteröd, Henrik Sjöstrand, Filip Kristofersson & Jonas Westin at VTI.