Study on real-time risk identification and route planning of inland vessel navigation: a case study of Guanhe River

With the continuous expansion of inland waterway transportation and increasing traffic density,vessels navigating in narrow channels with multiple obstacles and complex hydrological conditions are exposed to growing navigation risks,posing higher requirements for navigation safety assurance and path planning accuracy. Existing ship path planning methods are mainly developed for marine or open waters,while studies focusing on complex inland navigation environments remain limited. Moreover,external environmental factors are often insufficiently considered,leading to slow convergence and low planning efficiency in narrow or obstacle-dense waterways,which makes it difficult to satisfy the requirements for safety and real-time navigation of inland vessels. To address these issues,this study takes the Guanhe River in Jiangsu Province as the study area and proposes a real-time navigation risk identification and path planning method for inland waterways. Based on the RFRM, a navigation risk indicator system is established from five aspects: static characteristics, dynamic characteristics, natural environment, navigation environment, and human factors. An integrated weighting strategy combining the Analytic Hierarchy Process and the CRITIC method is employed to determine indicator weights,and the study area is discretized into regular grid cells to achieve spatial quantification of navigation risk levels. On this basis,the risk assessment results are incorporated into an artificial potential field model. By improving the potential field functions and introducing navigation rules and obstacle constraints,a unified framework for risk avoidance and navigational feasibility is achieved. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method can effectively avoid high-risk areas and exhibits a certain level of dynamic responsiveness. The generated paths comply with the Inland Collision Avoidance Regulations. The proposed approach provides technical support for real-time decision-making in inland vessel navigation and waterway traffic safety management,showing good engineering applicability.