Probability analysis of vessel collisions and groundings in southeast Texas waterways

The Sabine-Neches Waterway (SNWW) connects the Port of Beaumont, the Port of Port Arthur and the Port of Orange, with the Gulf of Mexico. The SNWW plays a critical role in supporting the economic growth of Southeast Texas. The safe navigation in narrow waterways is one of the most important concerns to maritime authorities and researchers. Collisions and groundings are two of the most common vessel accidents. In this research, we employed the grounding and collision analysis toolbox (GRACAT) to analyze the probabilities of collisions and groundings in multiple segments along the SNWW. The impacts of the vessel traffic on the probabilities of collisions or groundings are studied, respectively. Moreover, the high-risk zones for potential collisions or groundings are identified in the SNWW. We also employed BaSSy/IWRAP, another collision and grounding analysis tool by Gatehouse, to compare our results. The probability of grounding and collision analyzed by two different models are similar and their identified zones (waterway segments) for probability of collisions and groundings are same. This study includes a probabilistic model for ship-ship collision and groundings in the SNWW. Simulation results are compared with historical data. Our simulation results are consistent with the historical data, i.e. the locations of high vulnerable places of the channel also have the highest accident rates. The probabilities of vessel-bridge allisions are estimated for three bridges of the SNWW.