Study On Traffic Capacity Of Waterway Network

The waterborne transport is an economic, safe and environmental friendly mode oftransport and deeply contributes to the world economy and modern societies. Studieson the vessel traffic capacity in waterway network, are helpful to understand themechanism of vessel traffic in waterway network. Moreover, they are powerful toaccess the productivity of waterway resources, and support the decision making forvessel traffic management and channel design.In the past decades, most studies on vessel traffic capacity had been carried out forapproach channel designing and harbours and lock planning. However, there is veryfew attentions have been directed in the fields of waterway networks. In the contextof waterway networks, the complexity is apparent due to the topological layout offairways, the interaction between ships, and the effects of infrastructures. Therefore,the existing models will not be applicable to the current studies. Compared thesimilarity between road networks and waterways ones, the well-developed modelscan be tailed to deal with the issues in waterway networksDerived from the time-space consuming analysis for road traffic, this thesis takes theinland waterway network as object and establish a theoretical capacity model withrespect to simulation, a SIVAK (SImulatie VAarwegen en Kunstwerken) software isimplemented to reproduce the traffic flow in different scenarios. In order to predictthe ship behaviours, e.g. the choice of route at a node, a Discrete Choice Model(DCM) based model has been developed. In the model, Fuzzy Logic and FactorAnalysis are employed to describe the preference of individual pilot. An in-house-made computer program house-made program is developed to simulate and computerthe vessel capacity of the waterway network.Concerning the detailed works include:（1）All-side data was collected from the vessel traffic in the north Zhejiang waterway networks in China. Statistical analysis is used to summarize the features ofthe traffic flow and the characteristics of the natural environment and waterways.（2）Ship safety distance model for inland waterway network was regressed by fieldobservation data.. A space-time resource model for vessel traffic is presented, takingrecourse consumed by different ship behaviours into consideration. The above twoare the core part of the vessel traffic capacity model for waterway networks. Theresults indicate that the model could effectively discover the traffic capacity ofwaterway network. Additionally, of the effects under the change of traffic flow, shiplength and speed, were discussed（3）In order to simulate the traffic flow in this network, via SIVAK, differentscenarios was designed and investigated, e.g., normal (two-lane shipping) and trafficcontrol (one-lane shipping, suspended and mix mode). The result of capacity, waitingtime, and mean velocity in each case were presented.（4）According to the characteristics of ship behaviour in inland waterway network,a hybrid model is established to analyse the route choice behaviour based on DCMtheory. Fuzzy Logic and Factor Analysis were introduced to describe the attributes ofthe available alternatives. A computer program was developed and proved thecapability to reproduce the traffic flow considering route choice. Validated by realdata, further simulation experiments were carried out to predict and analysis thetraffic flow in waterway networks.