China proposed to establish a Free Trade Area on the Zhoushan Islands, specifically planning to arrange 8 crude oil berths above 300,000 tons on 3 islands. Due to the overlap of berths and offshore time and so on, the large crude oil vessels have high requirements in management. This paper established a multi–agent model of ship traffic flow in this area, considering various factors which affect ships’ navigation, focusing on assessing the passage capacity of the water area, the service level of large crude oil berths and the navigation impact of large crude oil vessels.
Ningbo–Zhoushan Port is an important maritime gateway to the Yangtze River Delta in China, which plays an important role in ensuring the transportation of energy and raw materials in the Yangtze River Delta and promoting the industrialization. In 2017, China formally issued the "China (Zhejiang) Pilot Free Trade Zone Overall Plan", further clarifying that Huangze Island, Shuangzi Island, and Qushan Island would focus on the development of the storage, transit, and trade industries of oil and other bulk commodities, and aimed to form a large–scale oil storage and transportation base. The Government of Zhejiang Province proposed to arrange 8 "large crude oil berths" (300,000 to 450,000 tons) in the Huangze area of Ningbo–Zhoushan Port, of which 7 berths would be located on both sides of the main navigation channels of the Huangze area, as shown in Fig 1.
Many scholars had used simulation methods to study the organization of ship traffic flow, for instance Mokshin, V.V. et al (2019) had major researched simulation and optimization of transport with Anylogic.
Muravev, D. et al (2020) proposed a multi-agent optimization of the intermodal terminal main parameters in Ningbo-Zhoushan Port by using Anylogic simulation platform. Jiang, J. et al (2017) used Anylogic to investigate the potential benefits of incorporating health management for the commissioning stages in ship building to reduce the overall cost of a ship programme. Yang, Q. et al (2018) proposed the simulation and verification of passenger ship emergency evacuation under emergency by using Anylogic. Malyshev, Nikolay V. et al (2020) used simulation modeling of inland container terminal operation with various types of equipment, to study the applicability of robotic automation. Dragovic, Branislav. et al (2016) claimed that the use of simulation models in the past 50 years had been increasingly favoured and instrumental in the development of ports and more specifically of container terminals. Wang Wenyuan. et al (2018) built an Anylogic-based port navigation operation simulation model to study the influence of the width of harbor basin on the port service level. Yao Haiyuan, Fang Zhuo. et al (2016-2019) used Anylogic in the simulation of LNG ships navigation in many cases.
