Real-time vessel behavior prediction

Vessel Traffic Management Systems (VTMS) and Vessel Traffic Monitoring Information Systems (VTMIS) have been available for a number of years now. These systems have significantly contributed to increasing the efficiency and safety of operations at sea. However, nowadays, risks at sea are once again on the rise, thus demanding an evolution in VTMS&VTMIS, such that they can support a human operator's better understanding of the complex reality at sea and enhance his or her decision-making in light of danger. A critical requirement of such systems is that they exhibit the ability to for-see unfolding cautious and potentially hazardous situations, so as to propose measures of danger avoidance. In this study, we employ machine learning, and specifically Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), as a tool to add predictive capacity to VTMIS and specifically MarineTraffic.com. The main concept of this study is to implement a publicly accessible, web-based system capable of real time learning and accurately predicting any vessels future behavior with low computational time. This work describes our approach, design choices, implementation and evaluation details, while we present a proof of concept prototype system. Our proposal can potentially be used as the predictive foundation for various intelligent systems, including vessel collision prevention, vessel route planning, operation efficiency estimation and even anomaly detection systems.