Agent-based model of maritime traffic in piracy-affected waters

Contemporary maritime piracy presents a significant threat to global shipping industry, with annual costs estimated at up to US$7bn. To counter the threat, policymakers, shipping operators and navy commanders need new data-driven decision-support tools that will allow them to plan and execute counter-piracy operations most effectively. So far, the provision of such tools has been limited. In cooperation with maritime domain stakeholders, we have therefore developed AgentC, a data-driven agent-based simulation model of maritime traffic that explicitly models pirate activity and piracy countermeasures. Modeling the behavior and interactions of thousands of individually simulated vessels, the model is capable of capturing the complex dynamics of the maritime transportation system threatened by maritime piracy and allows assessing the potential of a range of piracy countermeasures. We demonstrate the what-if analysis capabilities of the model on a real-world case study of designing a new transit corridor system in the Indian Ocean. The simulation results reveal that the positive past experience with the transit corridor in the narrow Gulf of Aden does not directly translate to the vast and open waters of the Indian Ocean and that additional factors have to be considered when designing corridor systems. The agent-based simulation development and calibration process used for building the presented model is general and can be used for developing simulation models of other maritime transportation phenomena.