Near Miss Analysis of Marine Traffic in Sunda Strait Indonesia

Fadilla Indrayuni Prastyasari

1,3,a

, Takeshi Shinoda

Department of Urban and Environmental Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Kyushu University, Japan

Department of Marine Systems Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, Kyushu University, Japan

Department of Marine Engineering, Faculty of Marine Technology, Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember, Indonesia

Keywords: AIS Data, Collision Accident, Near Miss, Probability, Sunda Strait.

Abstract: A near miss condition is an occurrence that does not result in any injury, loss, or damage but has a potential

to do so. In the field of safety management as shown by the Heinrich’s pyramid that behind one occurrence

of accident, there are at least 300 near miss incidents behind it. This marks the importance of near miss

analysis to prevent the future accident. This paper evaluates the near miss condition in Sunda Strait vicinity

by analysing the AIS data of that particular area. Sunda Strait is the primary route that serves two major

shipping lanes; the Archipelagic Sea Lanes (ASL) I and the crossing lane from Merak to Bakauheni for

passenger ferries. The near miss events considered are between a passing vessel and a crossing vessel or

between two passing vessels. A one-week AIS data of Sunda Strait is utilised to conduct the analysis. The

result of the analysis shows the probability of the near miss incident to be 7.72E-2. Furthermore, the location

of the near miss condition is also analysed. It is found that the near miss situation mostly happened near the

Merak Port. Crossing situation appeared to be the most frequently situation encountered in this area.

1 INTRODUCTION

Indonesia as an archipelagic country has adopted

three archipelagic sea lanes ASL) to allow the

international ship passing the Indonesia water. One of

the sea lanes is the Indonesia ASL (IASL) I, which

located in the west part of Indonesia passes the Sunda

Strait.Sunda Strait is a water area located in the west

of Java Island and connects it with Sumatera Island.

The traffic here is quite heavy because there are two

main passages, the international passage or the IASL

I, spanning in the north and south bound direction,

passed by the cargo ships going from or to the

Malacca Strait and the other one is a crossing channel,

which in east to west bound direction, used by

passenger ships from the Port of Merak in West of

Java to the Port of Bakauheni in Sumatera.

In response to the above-mentioned situation, the

Government of Indonesia proposed a traffic

separation scheme (TSS) to regulate the traffic in this

vicinity. A new TSS is proposed to the International

Maritime Organization (IMO) due to the high traffic

density in Sunda Strait, as the traffic is expected to

have a continuous increase in the near future

(IMO,2018). This may happen due to the port

facilities improvement and development as it wants to

be the new global transhipment hub as the China’s

maritime Silk Road passes through Indonesia waters.

Another reason is the existence of the Koliot Reefs

that is also considered tobe dangerous for the ships

passing through this strait due to the risk of

grounding.

The passageway of international cargo ships and

passenger ferries in Sunda Strait can cross each other

in the Sunda Strait area. This may result to a

possibility of collision while the number of it should

be reduced or eliminated, if possible. Therefore, it

would create a safe navigation passage not only for

the cargo vessels but also the passenger ferries and

there will be no serious injuries caused by the

collision accident.

In the safety management field, the Heinrich’s

safety triangle is known to be a triangle that can make

a relation between major accidents, minor incidents

and near misses. This triangle was theorized by

Herbert Heinrich in 1930s and states a ratio between

severe injury, minor injury and near miss to be

1:29:300, respectively (Heinrich, 1941). A near miss

condition is an occurrence that does not result in any

injury, loss, or damage but has a potential to do so.

This paper is aimed to give a brief preliminary

description on the near miss incident in Sunda Strait

Prastyasari, F. and Shinoda, T.

Near Miss Analysis of Marine Trafﬁc in Sunda Strait Indonesia.

DOI: 10.5220/0010855600003261

In Proceedings of the 4th International Conference on Marine Technology (senta 2019) - Transforming Maritime Technology for Fair and Sustainable Development in the Era of Industrial

Revolution 4.0, pages 153-159

ISBN: 978-989-758-557-9; ISSN: 2795-4579

153

area, as a basic to understand the marine traffic

around this water. The paper is divided into five

sections. Section 2 outlines the current traffic in

Sunda Strait, Section 3 describes about the automatic

identification system (AIS) data used for this

research, Section 4 discusses about the near miss in

the Sunda Strait, and the last, Section 5 gives the

conclusion of the paper.

2 TRAFFIC IN SUNDA STRAIT

Sunda strait is one of the major shipping lanes in

Indonesia. It is located between Java and Sumatera

Island and connects the Java Sea to the Indian Ocean.

This strait has become one of the busiest shipping

channels in Indonesia together with Lombok Strait,

Madura Strait and Malacca Strait. In addition, an

island is also located in the Sunda Strait that is

appointed as a Marine Nature Park named Sangiang

Island. Moreover, there are cluster of coral reefs,

named Koliot Reefs and Gosal Reefs, located in that

strait that may cause a risk of grounding to the ships

passing this area.

2.1 Current Traffic

Two types of ship traffic are navigating in Sunda

Strait. The first one is the ferry passenger ship that

operated between Merak Port in Banten and

Bakauheni Port in Lampung and the other one is

cargo ship coming from the Malacca Strait, Indian

Ocean, or South China Sea. Moreover, several special

ports owned by the industries are located close to the

Merak Port that serves some industrial facilities make

the traffic in this area becomes heavier (Sunaryo,

Priadi, & Tjahjono, 2015). The traffic density in

Sunda Strait is shown in Figure 1. The figure shows a

crossing point between the traffic of passenger ship

and the ships passing in IASL I. As shown in that

figure, the traffic here is quite heavy especially in the

route used by the passenger ferries crossing the strait.

The number of passengers commuting through this

strait shown a dramatical increase as depicted by

Figure 2.

Due to the dense marine traffic in Sunda Strait

area, several accidents occurred. One of them is an

accident between a gas tanker Norgas Cathinka, an

Italian flagged ship, that collided with a passenger

ferry named Bahuga Jaya in September 2012. This

was a serious accident as it caused 7 fatalities and a

major loss for both companies. The accident was

caused mainly by human error because the lack of

communication skills of the seafarers (NTSC, 2013).

2.2 Traffic Separation Scheme

Traffic separation scheme is a routeing measure used

to separating two opposing traffic in a certain

waterway by means of traffic lanes and other

appropriate means. It was firstly implemented on the

Dover Straits, the United Kingdom in 1967 and the

number of head-on collisions was found significantly

dropped after this measure had been implemented

(IMO, n.d.). It is outlined in the book of Ships

‘Routeing by the IMO that apart from TSS, there are

numerous numbers of routeing measures, for

example, inshore traffic zone, precautionary area,

two-way route, etc (IMO, 2008).

The implementation of TSS is expected to reduce

the collision frequency in a certain waterway. As

what has been summarized by (Plant, 1985) from the

Ships’ Routeing book that the purpose of TSS can be

shrunken into two, ship to ship collision avoidance

and collision avoidance between ship and static

facilities. Usually, the TSS is set in area with a high

traffic density as implemented in, for example, the

Sunk area in the United Kingdom (IMO, 2006), TSS

in the vicinity of Kattegat (Forsman, 2017), and also

the TSS in Straits of Malacca and Singapore

(Intergovernmental Maritime Consultative

Organization, 1978). The other reason for arranging

TSS is because the area has some environmental

constraints such as in TSS Bay of Fundy in Canada

and TSS Cabo de Gata in Spain that have a concern

to prevent ship from striking the whale as it is

categorized as an endangered species in those water

(Silber et al., 2012).

Figure 1: Heat map of Sunda Strait.

The implementation of TSS is expected to reduce

the collision frequency in a certain waterway. As

what has been summarized by (Plant, 1985) from the

Ships’ Routeing book that the purpose of TSS can be

shrunken into two, ship to ship collision avoidance

senta 2019 - The International Conference on Marine Technology (SENTA)

154

and collision avoidance between ship and static

facilities. Usually, the TSS is set in area with a high

traffic density as implemented in, for example, the

Sunk area in the United Kingdom (IMO, 2006), TSS

in the vicinity of Kattegat (Forsman, 2017), and also

the TSS in Straits of Malacca and Singapore

(Intergovernmental Maritime Consultative

Organization, 1978). The other reason for arranging

TSS is because the area has some environmental

constraints such as in TSS Bay of Fundy in Canada

and TSS Cabo de Gata in Spain that have a concern

to prevent ship from striking the whale as it is

categorized as an endangered species in those water

(Silber et al., 2012).

Traffic separation scheme for Sunda Strait has

been proposed by the Government of Indonesia (GoI)

the Sub-committee on Navigation, Communication

and Search and Rescue (NCSR) of IMO on October

2018, then on the 6

NCSR IMO plenary session was

approved and ratified. It also has been adopted by the

IMO in the 101

IMO MSC meeting and will come

into force in the June 2020. The background behind

this proposal was not only due to the high traffic

density in the Sunda Strait, but also the existence of

Koliot Reef nearby the shipping lane that the GoI

wants to protect as many grounding incident occurred

around this area.

The implementation of TSS is expected to reduce

the frequency of collision, especially the head-on

collision, and other collision types in general such as

overtaking and crossing collision. The purpose of this

measure is to separate a traffic lane which has two

opposing traffic to have their own lane. Theoretically,

this will push the probability of two ships having

contra direction to meet in a certain point. Hence, the

head-on collision frequency can be reduced. This

statement is in a good agreement with the calculation

done by (Fujii and Shiobara, 1971) that the number of

collision or collision rate for traffic that has a

complete separation is much smaller than the one that

has a complete mixing traffic, assuming that the

density is uniform and the number of vessels coming

and leaving are each equal to the half of the total

traffic.

The efforts made to reduce the number of

collisions by introducing TSS in Sunda Strait is

because there are many near miss situations and

several incidents happened that lead to a low to

serious damage and loss. The near miss situation

becomes the main interest in this paper, because this

situation happens more frequently rather than the real

accident. However, the near miss analysis can be

beneficial because it can give a picture in what way

the accident might happen, so it can be avoided.

3 AIS DATA

3.1 AIS System

Automatic Identification System (AIS) is an

automated ship tracking system that can make

navigational data exchange becomes possible,

between one ship to others or from ship to the shore-

based station. The data that can be stored in the AIS

includes static and dynamic data. Static information

is stored since the initial installation of AIS such as

Maritime Mobile Service Identity (MMSI) number,

IMO number, call sign, ship’s name, etc. While the

dynamic data is the data that keep changing depends

on the ship’s position. Those included in this type of

data are the position (longitude and latitude), course

over ground (COG), speed over ground (SOG),

heading, and so on (IMO, 2003). AIS transponder

shall be installed onboard of all passenger ship, all

ships above 300GT or above and bound for

international voyage and cargo ships of 500GT or

above and not bound for international voyage as

required by the IMO since 31 December 2014 (IMO,

n.d.)

AIS has been widely utilized in the marine sector

because its ability to store a broad range of data,

which is up to 27 message types, for many purposes,

such as, for the tracking system when it combined

with the Inmarsat and satellite for navigation(Yang et

al., 2011), estimating the traffic pattern in a certain

waterway (Chen et al., 2018), (Gunnar Aarsæther and

Moan, 2009), risk assessment and collision avoidance

(Miyake et al., 2015), (Mou et al.,2010) and (Nguyen

et al., 2018), spatial planning (Le Tixerant et

al.,2018), illegal fishing detection (Longépé et al.,

2018) and the last is the use of AIS data for near miss

collision as studied by Goerlandt et al. (2012) and

Zhang et al. (2016).

3.2 Data Collection

This research is utilizing AIS data to see the

manoeuvring process of the ship passing in the

vicinity of Sunda Strait. AIS data for the period of one

year was collected for the purpose of this research

started from 8th of October 2018 until 21stof October

2019. However, a sample of a one-week data started

from 8

of October 2018 until 13

of October 2018 is

taken and analysed. A one-week data is selected to

make sure that near miss situations are exist in that

area. That period of time is chosen because there are

too many data gaps and that makes analysing the AIS

data continuously becomes difficult. The distribution

Near Miss Analysis of Marine Trafﬁc in Sunda Strait Indonesia

155

of data gap is shown in Figure3.The red area shows

that there is no data recorded in that time

Figure 2: Number of passengers using passenger ferries in

Sunda Strait.

Figure 3: Distribution of AIS data.

There are 132093 of AIS data used for this

paper. The AIS data structure used in this research

consists of:

a. static data: MMSI, ship name, ship callsign,

ship type, GT, DWT, length, depth, beam, draft,

year built, and flag.

b. dynamic data: latitude, longitude, rate of turn,

speed over ground, course over ground,

heading, and timestamp.

3.3 Data Collection

The AIS data that has been collected in the

previous step is then used to get the extracted trip.

This can be done by using a software named IALA

waterway risk assessment program (IWRAP)

developed by International Association of Marine

Aids to Navigation and Lighthouse Authorities

(IALA). IALA is an organization that collect and

provide some information regarding nautical

matters. The IWRAP software is developed to

make the calculation of collision and grounding

collision easier.

The AIS data is then processed to get the traffic

density, heat map,

extract

the route of the ships, as

well as to see the movement of each ship. The

ship’s trips are visually observed to determine

whether they are engaged in a near miss condition

and then the type of encounter is decided. The

analysis is made to know the traffic conditions in

Sunda Strait. Near miss analysis issued to see the

characteristic of a certain water without expecting

a collision to occur. For example, we can predict

the traffic pattern by understanding where the near

misses are likely to occur.

4 NEAR MISS ANALYSIS

The near miss

analysis

is carried out to understand

the characteristic of marine traffic in Sunda Strait.

As it has been previously mentioned that near miss

analysis can help avoiding the real accident by

studying how the ships began to manoeuvre while

they are facing the risk of collision in Sunda Strait

that has a high traffic density.

The analysis of near miss condition in this paper

includes:

a. The probability of near miss situation in the

period of analysis

b. The location which the near miss condition

occurred,

c. The time where most of the near miss situation

occurred.

4.1 Probability of Near Miss

The near miss situation in Sunda Strait is marked by

the movement of the ships that tend to avoid the other

ships by doing such manoeuvres. This research is

utilizing AIS data to see the manoeuvring process of

the ship passing in the vicinity of Sunda Strait. The

frequency of it can be used to predict the number of

minor and major accidents and help to avoid those

conditions by understanding the factors that lead to

the accident.

Figure 4a to 4d show how the ship has

successfully manoeuvred while encountering the

collision risk with two other ships. The blue point

shows the CPA between two ships encountered each

other, the black line is the course over ground line,

while the red line indicates the heading. In Figure 4a,

Cipta Anyer is approaching KMP Bahuga Pratama

and Trimas Kanaya. The heading of Cipta Anyer

slightly changed to avoid the collision course with

both ships and the heading also further changed in

1400986

1347335

1398765

1459120

1652525

1300000

1400000

1500000

1600000

1700000

2010 2011 2012 2013 2014

Passenger crossing Sunda Strait

senta 2019 - The International Conference on Marine Technology (SENTA)

156

Figure 4c. Figure 4d shows that the Cipta Anyer can

safely passed the near miss condition.

Analysis of the near miss frequency is done by

carefully watch or can be said as visually observing

the ship’s movements. The total of 55 near miss

conditions were observed during the designated one-

week period. The traffic during one week of

observation is outlined in the Table 1. The detail of it

is shown in Figure 5. This figure shows three different

types of encounters, head on, overtaking, and

crossing with each type of encounter occurred 4, 2

and 49 times, respectively and shown in Figure 5,

Crossing encounter is found to be the most frequently

happened encounter due to the present traffic in

Sunda Strait is still unregulated due to the TSS has

not been come into force, so there are many ships

cross each other in the waterway. Probability of the

near miss is calculated by using this following

equation.

𝑃

𝑁



𝑉

(1)

Figure 4: Distribution of AIS data.

Where;

: number of near miss situation (events)

V : total traffic volume (trips)

Equation 1 yields the probability of near miss

condition in the Sunda Strait during six days started

from 8

of October to 13

of October 2018 to be

7.72E-2 event per six-day.

4.2 Distance between Ship

IWRAP has utilized the concept of closest point of

approach (CPA). This theory is then used to calculate

the distance of closest point of approach and the time

of closest point of approach. This paper uses the

distance to CPA of two ships to understand how close

the distance between two ships. The Figure6 below is

the graph that shows the distance to the closest point

of approach (DCPA) that is shown by IWRAP. It is

shown that most of them encounter other ships in the

distance of less than 1.3km or approximately 0.7 nm.

The distance between two ships encountering a

collision situation is very close until they made such

a manoeuvre to avoid each other. Hence, it can be

inferred that the decision made by the officer on

watch (OOW) was not made until he believes that the

collision cannot be avoided if he does not make any

effort.

4.3 Time of Near Miss

The near miss situation can happen due to many

factors. Time of day was thought to be one of the

contributions to the near miss situation. It was firstly

considered that the near miss situation is encountered

during the night-time as the traffic of the cargo ships

are denser during this time.

Figure 7 depicts how the time in a day give an

effect to the near miss situation. The available data is

processed to see when the near miss situations are

most likely to occur. The observation came up with

the result that the near miss often occurred during 9

pm to 12am. However, at6am to 9am and 12pm to

3pm, both have the same number of near misses

happened during that time.

Table 1: Traffic volume in Sunda Strait.

Date 8-Oct-18 9-Oct-18 10-Oct-18 11-Oct-18 12-Oct-18 13-Oct-18 Total

Traffic volume 76 90 162 128 184 72 712

(a) (b)

(

)

(

)

Figure 5: Manouver made by a ship encountering othe

ships.

Near Miss Analysis of Marine Trafﬁc in Sunda Strait Indonesia

157

Figure 6: Near Miss Frequency for each type of encounter.

Figure 7: Summary of distance to the CPA.

Figure 8: Near miss frequency for each type of encounters.

5 CONCLUSIONS

A near miss condition is an occurrence that does not

result in any injury, loss, or damage but has a potential

to do so. Near miss collision in. the vicinity of Sunda

Strait is studied in this paper. AIS data is collected for

one year, from 8th of October2018 until 21st of

October 2019. However, only a six-day period is used

in this research to understand the traffic conditions in

this area.

There are three key points of the near miss

condition that become the main focus, those are, the

probability of the near miss, the distance between two

ships in the near miss situation and the time when the

near miss happened. The first one, the probability of

the near miss condition is 7.72E-2 for the duration of

six days. Next, the distance to the closest point of

approach observed between two ships during the time

interval mostly less than 1.3km or 0.7nm. Lastly, the

time when most of the near miss happened is during

9pm to 12am.

The first finding of this research shown that the

crossing situation occurred mostly during a week.

This result has a good agreement with the fact that the

passage of cargo ships which follow the IASLI

crosses the passage of passenger ferries from Merak

to Bakauheni. This situation leads to the development

of the precautionary area, which is the area where the

vessel must navigate with caution to reduce the risk

of, which in this case is, crossing collision

The second result, we found that the vessels which

is in an encountering situation tend to stay on their

speed and course and take a collision avoidance

action when the distance is less than1 nm. This action

shall be taken as early as possible or when one of the

vessels is realizing the risk of collision, to avoid the

vessel involved in a close quarter situation.

The last result corresponds to the near miss

situation that frequently happened during midnight

(21:00–24:00). This can be happened due to low

visibility, misunderstood the ship light with an

inshore light, or other factors. A further study needs

to be conducted in order to understand the factors

involved in the collision accident or near miss in

Sunda Strait.

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