Grey model for evaluating collision risks in a meeting area for large ships

A grey variable weight clustering model is introduced to evaluate the collision risks for large ships in a meeting area. The traffic flow and the ships encountering situations in the meeting area are studied and the traffic conflict rate and distribution of traffic conflict points are defined as the collision risk evaluation indexes for the meeting area. The grey variable weight clustering model with adjusted initialization operator is used because the indexes are significantly different in meaning, dimension, and range of value, besides, there are environment factors influencing the navigation safety in the area such as the anchorage around. No.4 ship meeting area of west channel of Nansan Island in Zhanjiang Port is processed for verification.