Heterogeneous port traffic of general ships and seaplanes and its simulation

Abstract

Along with the development of the civil seaplane industry in China and all around the world, the number of seaplane piers in port areas will increase. As a consequence, the port traffic will not only increase, it will also become more heterogeneous, consisting of ships and seaplanes. This paper presents a simulation model to describe this mixed traffic and investigates the impact of seaplanes on the ship traffic quantitatively. Given the different maneuverability of ships and seaplanes, the impact of seaplanes on port traffic operations is analyzed from three aspects, being traffic separation between seaplanes and ships, traffic interruption, and traffic priority of seaplanes. A simulation model has been developed using a Cell Transmission Model (CTM). To evaluate the navigational impact of seaplanes quantitatively, the traffic recovery time from the disturbance of a seaplane takeoff or landing event is used as an assessment indicator of the model. The model sensitivity analysis indicates that the capacity of a cell is more important than the density of ships. This implies the capacity needs to be estimated more accurately to get a better simulation result.