Physical Risk Analysis of Ship Grounding

Shu-chiang Lin, Hauke L. Kite-Powell, Nicholas M. Patrikalakis

Abstract:	Groundings of commercial ships contribute to one third of all commercial maritime accidents in U.S. waters, including some of the worst in the United States' history. This study presents an analysis on the factors contributing to groundings when ships transit in and out of ports. More specifically, this study has been part of a three-year project on “Ship Transit Risk” that employs historical casualty data to build models for quantitative assessment of navigational risks entailed by vessels during transits into and out of ports. By verifying the grounding location database generated during the first two years of the project against the United States Coast Guard’s grounding accident data, an updated database was established in this research. Within the frame of this new database, two factors were analyzed—tide and time of day. The results suggest that tide forecast error (predicted tide water level minus observed tide water level) had no significant effect as a risk factor, and that night navigation was far more risky than day navigation.
Published in:	Proceedings of the 55th Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (1999) June 27 - 30, 1999 Royal Sonesta Hotel Cambridge, MA
Pages:	69 - 77
Cite this article:	Lin, Shu-chiang, Kite-Powell, Hauke L., Patrikalakis, Nicholas M., "Physical Risk Analysis of Ship Grounding," Proceedings of the 55th Annual Meeting of The Institute of Navigation (1999), Cambridge, MA, June 1999, pp. 69-77.
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