A Survey of Distance-Based Vessel Trajectory Clustering: Data Pre-processing, Methodologies, Applications, and Experimental Evaluation

Vessel trajectory clustering, a crucial component of the maritime intelligent transportation systems, provides valuable insights for applications such as anomaly detection and trajectory prediction. This paper presents a comprehensive survey of the most prevalent distance-based vessel trajectory clustering methods, which encompass two main steps: trajectory similarity measurement and clustering. Initially, we conducted a thorough literature review using relevant keywords to gather and summarize pertinent research papers and datasets. Then, this paper discussed the principal methods of data pre-processing that prepare data for further analysis. The survey progresses to detail the leading algorithms for measuring vessel trajectory similarity and the main clustering techniques used in the field today. Furthermore, the various applications of trajectory clustering within the maritime context are explored. Finally, the paper evaluates the effectiveness of different algorithm combinations and pre-processing methods through experimental analysis, focusing on their impact on the performance of distance-based trajectory clustering algorithms. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of various trajectory clustering algorithms and notably highlight the significant improvements that trajectory compression techniques contribute to the efficiency and accuracy of trajectory clustering. This comprehensive approach ensures a deep understanding of current capabilities and future directions in vessel trajectory clustering.

Prediction of Vessel Arrival Time to Pilotage Area Using Multi-Data Fusion and Deep Learning

This paper investigates the prediction of vessels' arrival time to the pilotage area using multi-data fusion and deep learning approaches. Firstly, the vessel arrival contour is extracted based on Multivariate Kernel Density Estimation (MKDE) and clustering. Secondly, multiple data sources, including Automatic Identification System (AIS), pilotage booking information, and meteorological data, are fused before latent feature extraction. Thirdly, a Temporal Convolutional Network (TCN) framework that incorporates a residual mechanism is constructed to learn the hidden arrival patterns of the vessels. Extensive tests on two real-world data sets from Singapore have been conducted and the following promising results have been obtained: 1) fusion of pilotage booking information and meteorological data improves the prediction accuracy, with pilotage booking information having a more significant impact; 2) using discrete embedding for the meteorological data performs better than using continuous embedding; 3) the TCN outperforms the state-of-the-art baseline methods in regression tasks, exhibiting Mean Absolute Error (MAE) ranging from 4.58 min to 4.86 min; and 4) approximately 89.41% to 90.61% of the absolute prediction residuals fall within a time frame of 10 min.