The City Port of Split - assessment of the risk of collisions and groundings

The Port of Split is divided into two main parts: the so-called North Port , which mainly handles cargo ships, and the City Port , which mainly serves as a passenger port. The City Port is the largest Croatian passenger port and the busiest, especially in the summer season. In addition to the high volume of passenger ships, especially local ferries, the large number of small vessels is also a major safety problem. In addition, the access routes to the North Port passes very close to the entrance to the City Port , which makes the situation even worse. For this reason, the entrance to the City Port and the area inside the port are very dangerous, as collisions, groundings, impacts and other accidents can easily occur. Since the traffic of small vessels is very difficult to track and there is basically no system to track them, most previous analyses of maritime risk in this area are based on statistics derived from port authority reports and from AIS (Automatic indentification system) data. The aim of this study is to determine the actual number of vessel movements within the area of the City Port of Split and accordingly estimate how the traffic of small vessels (without AIS) increases the probability of collisions and groundings. The actual number of vessel movements is determined using a video surveillance system for the relevant period and later compared with the AIS data. The IWRAP software is used to analyse the risk of collisions and groundings.