Between August and September 2018, the scale of Typhoons No. 20, 21, and 24 seriously affected and/or damaged ships in the Osaka Bay area. Typhoon No. 20 passed in proximity to Harima Nada while Typhoon No. 21 traversed Osaka Bay to pass in proximity to Awaji Island before landing in Hyogo Prefecture. As for Typhoon No. 24, it landed in Wakayama or Osaka Prefecture. Among the three, Typhoon No. 21 caused a majority of the ships anchored in Osaka Bay in order to avoid the effects of rough seas to suffer from the effects of anchor dragging. In fact, anchor dragging caused one of those ships to collide with the Kansai International Airport Access Bridge – an incident that had a major social impact.
The main focus of this paper is, therefore, a consideration of the ship anchorage situation in Osaka Bay. Including the aforementioned incident during Typhoon No.21, aspects of incidents that occurred during Typhoons No. 20 and No. 24 are considered and analyzed for the purpose of contributing to the prevention of such incidents in the future.
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