Multi-Source Data Supported Maritime Traffic Knowledge Discovery for Autonomous Ship Navigation

Dear Colleagues,

The shipping industry has become a critical component of global logistics along with continuous advancements in science and technology. Smart ships are proposed and developed for the purpose of enhancing maritime traffic safety and efficiency. Multi-source maritime data supported traffic situation awareness and knowledge discovery helps smart ships obtain precise traffic environmental information. Smart ships may encounter varied yet unexpected navigation challenges. For instance, smart ships may fail to identify nearby ships under adverse weather conditions even if they are deployed with varied visual/ non-visual sensors. In this way, smart ships may make unreasonable navigation decisions, which can trigger severe maritime traffic accidents. We also recommended developing robust ship navigation and identification models to help autonomous ships safely sail in waterways, such as ship detection and collision avoidance, ship route optimization, etc.

The Special Issue aims to open a new perspective on maritime traffic knowledge discovery via multi-source data towards smart ship navigation. We welcome the submission of manuscripts which align with our Special Issue topic of “Multi-Source Data Supported Maritime Traffic Knowledge Discovery for Autonomous Ship Navigation”. The sample topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Large language model based maritime traffic knowledge discovery;
• Embodied intelligence for autonomous ship navigation;
• Lightweight smart ship visual navigation model exploitation;
• Multi-source maritime data supported traffic situation awareness;
• Traffic information exploitation under adverse weather;
• Multi-source maritime data fusion and semantic knowledge modeling;
• Ship collision avoidance based ship detection, tracking via deep learning model;
• Ship path planning and route optimization;
• Embodied intelligence based smart ship navigation and control.

Dr. Xinqiang Chen
Prof. Dr. Huafeng Wu
Prof. Dr. Dezhi Han
Dr. Octavian Postolache
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Journal of Marine Science and Engineering is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.