Abstract
This paper presents a simulation study of the characteristics of the northbound and southbound traffic in Tokyo Bay using various ship agents, and discusses these agents' capability of recapturing the marine traffic flow. Each ship agent consists of a sensor, a decision-making function, memory, and an effector. The decision-making function performs circumstantial judgments and makes course and speed adjustments utilizing a ship cluster behavior model. A maneuverability expression function using the TK model was newly incorporated into the effector. Simulations based on the actual traffic of the Uraga Suido Traffic Route revealed the following: (1) The maneuverability expression function has a larger influence on the passage deviation frequency than on the near miss frequency. (2) The near miss frequency increases with the increase in the number of navigation ships. (3) The passage deviation frequency is higher in the time-dependent traffic than in the fixed traffic. (4) When a group of ships (i.e. agents) have more uniform characteristics, the traffic flow becomes smoother, leading to smaller near miss and passage deviation frequencies.
