Fuzzy C-Means Clustering of Ships

Passing Through Turkish Straits

Cengiz Vefa Ekici1,2(B) , Ozcan Arslan1 , and Ulku Ozturk2

1
Department of Maritime Transportation Engineering, Istanbul Technical
University, Tuzla, Istanbul, Turkey
2
Turkish Naval Forces, Ankara, Turkey
ekicice@itu.edu.tr

Abstract. Maritime authorities not only have ensured reactive but also
proactive measures in the straits, canals and narrow waterways with geo-
graphical restrictions and high traffic density to mitigate possible accident
risks. These measures include a variety of approaches to conducting a real-
istic risk analysis. Considering the previous accidents, increasing traffic
density and unique difficulties in the Turkish Straits, taking proactive mea-
sures to ensure their safety has become an important issue. Furthermore, a
wide variety of ships navigating this waterway have been having difficulties
in making good judgments. Therefore, this study has focused on the clus-
tering of the ships in the Turkish Straits which can be deemed as the first
step of realistic risk analysis in narrow waterways. Fuzzy C-Means clus-
tering method has been employed, based on Sailing Plan-1 reports data
between 2005 and 2021 in order to reveal maritime traffic characteristics
for further analysis. Results have shown that three clusters are suitable for
ship risk profile as a first step but an additional hierarchical layer may be
needed to overcome the contradictory situations.

Keywords: Fuzzy clustering · Maritime safety · Narrow waterways ·

Turkish Straits

1 Introduction
Given the fact that 90% of world trade is carried by maritime transportation,
safety at sea is a crucial aspect [1]. It consists of three fundamental components,
namely safety of life, property and environment, and is ensured by mitigating
risks to acceptable levels and by preventing marine accidents.
Accident risks in maritime transport are higher in ports, inland waters or
narrow waterways rather than open seas [2]. Especially, the safety of navigation
in narrow waterways is a major concern for maritime authorities [3]. Geograph-
ically, geopolitically and economically, some narrow waterways have strategic
importance and have come to a position that will seriously affect maritime trade
[4]. The Turkish Straits, which can affect maritime trade and world oil trans-
portation, are among the most dangerous narrow waterways in the world due
to their geographical structure and traffic density [5]. Consisting of the Istanbul
c The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022
C. Kahraman et al. (Eds.): INFUS 2022, LNNS 504, pp. 352–359, 2022.
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-09173-5_43
 Fuzzy C-Means Clustering of Ships Passing Through Turkish Straits 353

Strait, the Canakkale Strait and the Sea of Marmara, the Turkish Straits also
demonstrate their importance as the only waterway connecting the Black Sea
and the Mediterranean [6]. The increasing ship sizes and traffic density in par-
allel with the world trade on this waterway endanger the safety of the Straits
[7]. Based on this requirement, various measures have been taken in the Turkish
Straits.
In the light of this information, it is apparent that reducing the risk to an
acceptable level appears to be the most appropriate solution considering the
maritime accidents, which cannot be prevented, and it has been evaluated that
measures can be increased by implementing risk assessments. Taking into con-
sideration the academic studies on the Turkish Straits, it can be clearly seen that
there has not been an effective scientific study that will enable the ships to pass
through the Straits with safety by calculating the potential risks of those ships.
In order to minimize the risk of possible accidents and environmental pollution,
it is crucial to monitor the ships and to ensure that the necessary measures are
taken proactively by Turkish Straits Vessel Traffic Services (TSVTS). From this
point of view, this study has focused on the patterns and the clustering of the
ships in the Turkish Straits which can be deemed as the first step of realistic
risk analysis in narrow waterways. Fuzzy C-Means clustering (FCM) method
has been employed, based on Sailing Plan (SP)-1 reports data between the years
2005 and 2021 in order to reveal maritime traffic characteristics for further anal-
ysis. According to FCM results, we have obtained 3 clusters for further analysis
of the Turkish Straits. Correspondingly, trends in data have been extracted and
presented.
Within the scope of the aforementioned information, this study is organized
as follows. In Sect. 2, the literature review is expressed. SP-1 reports data exam-
ination is introduced in Sect. 3. In Sect. 4, the application of the FCM method is
explained and in Sect. 5, results are assessed. In the last section, the conclusion
is presented. SP-1 reports data were obtained from the Directorate General of
Coastal Safety.

2 Literature Review

The identification of ships with high risk has great importance for navigational
safety, and many studies conducted on this topic. In Degré’s [8] paper, the princi-
ples and purpose of risk models are explained and the ship risk index is proposed
as a proactive risk assessment approach for further studies. In addition to this, in
the study by Sage [9], it was emphasized that high-risk ships can be monitored
with more sensitivity by Vessel Traffic Services (VTS) and proactive measures
can be taken effectively in order to mitigate risks. In Kao’s [10] study, a decision
support system for VTSs is proposed by stating that VTSs are not technically
capable of ensuring safety in highly congested waters, and shall be supported.
In order to ensure navigation safety, a fuzzy-based maritime risk assessment
(MARISA) model that reveals the ship risk index is developed by Balmat [11],
and ship parameters and environmental factors are utilized. In another study of
354 C. V. Ekici et al.

Balmat [12], MARISA was updated with two more ship parameters to enhance
the model. In Dinis’s [13] study, a static ship risk profile model was developed
with a probabilistic approach using the ship risk profile parameters of the Paris
MoU. In the study, it is also stated that with the help of this model, the capacity
of VTSs to manage the maritime traffic risk, will greatly increase.
Whilst reviewing the studies on the Turkish Straits, it is observed that statis-
tical analysis of accidents, analysis of maritime traffic and risk assessment of the
straits have been carried out generally. The majority of the studies were focused
on the Istanbul Strait, which is geographically more challenging and dangerous,
followed by studies on the Canakkale Strait. However, the number of studies
regarding the Sea of Marmara is negligible.

3 Data Examination

Maritime risk analysis should be conducted specifically in the region due to the
complexity of the maritime environment. Maritime regions are unique and data
obtained from these regions may not be reliable due to introduced regulations
and practices. In this respect, when the practices and regulations in the Turkish
Straits are examined, it is seen that the Turkish Straits have unique character-
istics and data constraints. For this study, the SP-1 report’s data between the
years 2005 and 2021 were obtained, and as ship characteristics, age during the
passage, length, breadth, draft, gross tonnage, maximum maneuvering speed,
flag and personnel on board were selected (see Table 1). Chosen ship charac-
teristics are numerical variables except for the ship flag, which is a categorical
variable. In order to transform the ship flag into a numerical variable, the Paris
MoU excess factor for flag categorization 2021 is used. Data cleaning is con-
ducted, ship types are categorized as Tanker, Cargo, Container and Passenger
ships, and other types of ships are excluded.

Table 1. SP-1 reports data.

Count Mean Std Min 25% 50% 75% Max

Length 512218 151.07 55.42 34.84 106.80 140.00 183.17 399.99
Breadth 512218 22.93 9.06 5.20 15.80 21.00 29.99 68.00
Maneuvering speed 512218 11.85 2.39 3.50 10.00 11.60 13.00 40.40
Gross tonnage 512218 17837.97 20860.46 142 3700 8995 25065 232618
Age during passage 512218 16.90 11.41 0 7 15 26 60
Draft 512218 7.16 2.79 3.01 5.00 6.70 8.90 19.93
Personnel on board 512218 19.12 31.27 5 13 18 22 1372
Flag factor 512218 −0.63 1.57 −1.80 −1.46 −1.34 −0.58 5.00
 Fuzzy C-Means Clustering of Ships Passing Through Turkish Straits 355

Whereas the data is inspected thoroughly, it has been observed that the ship
length, breadth and gross tonnage are highly correlated (see Table 2). Consider-
ing correlation analysis, ship length was utilized, and breadth and gross tonnage
were excluded. Besides, in order to obtain wholesome results, the Shapiro-Wilk
test was conducted as a normality analysis, and it was observed that the selected
variables were not well fitted to normal distribution. Therefore, normality trans-
formation (Box-Cox, etc.) has been applied to the whole data set. Notwithstand-
ing these shortcomings, FCM clustering has been applied in order to classify ship
risk profiles. As can be seen in Table 2, the mean of Flag Factor is −0.63 which
indicates that ships, passing through Straits, are above the standard safety level
(White flag).

Table 2. Correlation analysis

Length Breadth Speed Tonnage Age Draft Personnel Flag

Length 1.0000 0.9417 0.4779 0.9154 −0.3907 0.7384 0.1873 −0.2656
Breadth 0.9417 1.0000 0.4253 0.9168 −0.4171 0.7473 0.1543 −0.2870
Maneuvering speed 0.4779 0.4253 1.0000 0.3916 −0.3513 0.3353 0.1339 −0.3057
Gross tonnage 0.9154 0.9168 0.3916 1.0000 −0.3561 0.7003 0.1984 −0.2371
Age during passage −0.3907 −0.4171 −0.3513 −0.3561 1.0000 −0.3048 −0.0354 0.4758
Draft 0.7384 0.7473 0.3353 0.7003 −0.3048 1.0000 0.0860 −0.2474
Personnel on board 0.1873 0.1543 0.1339 0.1984 −0.0354 0.0860 1.0000 −0.0510
Flag factor −0.2656 −0.2870 −0.3057 −0.2371 0.4758 −0.2474 −0.0510 1.0000

4 Methodology

Revealing the clusters of ships passing through straits in order to enlighten

further risk assessment studies is the primary aim of this study. Therefore, for
revealing patterns and subdividing datasets into clusters based on similarities
and dissimilarities, clustering methods were evaluated, and it was seen that in
hard clustering methods, data is divided into different clusters, whereas in soft
clustering methods, data points can potentially belong to multiple clusters. Given
the complexity of the maritime environment, it was assessed that soft clustering
methods are more suitable in a complex environment. Therefore, FCM clustering
was selected as a proper method in this study.
The FCM clustering algorithm was first developed for a special case by Dunn
[14] and was generalized [15] and improved by Bezdek [16]. FCM objective func-
tion is presented below.
n 
 c
m
 2
argmin wij xi − cj  (1)
i=1 j=1
356 C. V. Ekici et al.

where:
1
wij =   (2)
xi −cj   m−1
2
c
 
k=1 xi −ck 

where wij represents the membership degree of ith data to j th cluster center,
and m is fuzziness index. xi , cj is the
 d-dimensional data and the d-dimensional
cluster, respectively, and xi − cj  is the euclidean distance of ith data to j th
cluster center. Briefly, this algorithm attempts to minimize the objective function
by assigning fuzzy membership to each data point corresponding to each cluster
center based on the euclidean distance between the clusters and the data points.
Following the data cleaning process, in order to reveal the patterns, the firstly
fuzzy partition coefficient was calculated. Two clusters have the highest fuzzy
partition coefficient as can be seen in Fig. 1. However, two clusters may lead
to some management misunderstandings. It has been assessed that 3 clusters
may provide more applicable results rather than 4 or 5 since the fuzzy partition
coefficient of 3 clusters is relatively more close to that of 2. Therefore, FCM was
utilized with 3 cluster centers, which was determined considering the high-risk
ship, standard risk ship and low-risk ship categories as also used in the ship risk
profile by Paris MoU.

Fig. 1. Partition coefficient

5 Results and Discussion

In Table 3, it is observed that ship length is a dominant feature which is a crucial

attribute of ships in the view of safety issues, as expected. As a result of the scale
economy, ships have been built in larger sizes more and more. Therefore, there
is a negative correlation between length and age during the passage, new ships
are larger and old ships are smaller as a comparison.
 Fuzzy C-Means Clustering of Ships Passing Through Turkish Straits 357

Table 3. Explanatory data of clusters

Cluster 1 Count Mean Std Min 25% 50% 75% Max

Length 247849 105.06 18.78 34.84 89.90 105.94 119.10 142.42
Maneuvering speed 247849 10.63 1.82 3.50 9.50 10.50 12.00 30.00
Age during passage 247849 21.77 11.93 0.00 11.00 23.00 31.00 60.00
Draft 247849 5.26 1.46 3.01 4.00 5.00 6.30 19.32
Personnel on board 247849 13.65 4.64 5.00 11.00 13.00 16.00 307.00
Flag factor 247849 −0.19 1.85 −1.80 −1.34 −1.13 0.63 5.00
Cluster 2 Count Mean Std Min 25% 50% 75% Max
Length 195899 173.08 18.34 127.44 157.12 177.5 185.22 216.00
Maneuvering speed 195899 12.72 2.10 4.00 11.40 12.50 14.00 40.40
Age during passage 195899 13.17 9.07 0.00 6.00 11.00 20.00 58.00
Draft 195899 8.23 2.09 3.02 6.60 8.10 9.90 19.93
Personnel on board 195899 21.92 16.24 5.00 19.00 21.00 23.00 1123.00
Flag factor 195899 −0.99 1.19 −1.80 −1.54 −1.40 −0.97 5.00
Cluster 3 Count Mean Std Min 25% 50% 75% Max
Length 68469 254.67 30.94 176.20 228.60 246.83 274.40 399.99
Maneuvering speed 68469 13.78 2.59 5.00 12.00 13.06 15.30 28.25
Age during passage 68469 9.98 7.09 0.00 4.00 9.00 14.00 55.00
Draft 68469 10.93 2.73 3.2 8.64 10.90 12.90 18.00
Personnel on board 68469 30.96 78.82 5.00 21.00 23.00 25.00 1372.00
Flag factor 68469 −1.24 0.81 −1.80 −1.63 −1.46 −1.34 5.00

Ship length and age during passage are depicted in Fig. 2 to demonstrate the
boundaries of clusters. Data is color-scaled with membership degrees to deter-
mine the boundaries of clusters. Fuzzy boundaries of ship length are approx-
imately 140 and 210 m. These values demonstrate consistency with the Turk-
ish Straits “Large vessel” (ship larger than 200 m) and “Vessels having diffi-
culties navigating within Traffic Separation Scheme” (ship larger than 150 m)
definitions. Owing to the dominance of ship length, boundaries of clusters have
been observed distinctly. However, boundaries for other parameters cannot be
detected clearly due to the complexity of multidimensional clustering. Further-
more, age during passage doesn’t have any influence on ship length for deter-
mining fuzzy clusters since the low membership degree region doesn’t change as
the age during passage changes according to Fig. 2.
Age during passage is decreasing as the ship length is increasing according to
fuzzy clustering results. As a general acceptance in the maritime domain, larger
ships indicate high risk than small ships, especially in narrow waters. However,
our results show that the flag factor indicates more reliable ships as the ship
length increases which leads us to a contradictory outcome. Therefore, it has
been assumed that each cluster should be analyzed independently in case of any
ship risk profile analysis.
358 C. V. Ekici et al.

Fig. 2. Ship length vs Age during passage

6 Conclusion
It is aimed to reveal the patterns and cluster number of ships passing through
the Turkish Straits, which is one of the most dangerous narrow and congested
waterways in the world with its economic and geopolitical importance. The main
contribution of this study is to reveal the cluster number of ships for narrow
waterways. It has been seen that the number of clusters determined in this study
is consistent with not only the Paris MoU ship risk profile cluster number but
also the classification scheme of Turkish Authorities. The proposed cluster size
can lead us to understand the pattern in the straits. Furthermore, it is observed
that there are no clear fuzzy boundaries in features except ship length, which
lead ship risk assessment to become difficult.
Taking into account other features such as Paris MoU inspection results
(Deficiencies, detentions, etc.) can give more in-depth results. In this manner,
new risk assessment approaches can be launched according to these data. There-
fore, including port state control data and other additional characteristics with
hierarchical or any other approaches can be considered for future studies.

Acknowledgements. The article is produced from the Ph.D. thesis research of Cengiz
Vefa Ekici entitled “Developing Ship Risk Profile Model for Turkish Straits” which has
been executed in a Ph.D. Program in Maritime Transportation Engineering of Istanbul
Technical University Graduate School.

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