Abstract
Nowadays, despite all advantageous technological support systems in marine traffic, ship collision accidents continue to occur. Thus, it is essential to minimize collision risk. Collision risk index plays an important role in assessing ship collision risk and is one of the attractive issues in the research field of ship collision avoidance. With accurate collision risk index obtained through ship characteristics, movement parameters and encounter situation, the navigator can make correct decisions of avoidance action. In this article, a new approach of collision risk index model, named Potential Risk Index, based on influence function is proposed. The length and speed of the ship have been fully considered. This index can express the degree of risk level of situation and show the ability to evaluate collision risk in real time. Therefore, the index proposed in this paper has promising application in the field of safe marine navigation.