The impact of the modified ships’ routes in the Kattegat on the safety of navigation at the entrance to the Baltic Sea

Since the 1970s, ships in the Kattegat area and the Baltic Sea entrances have been advised to use one of the routes established by the Danish Maritime Safety Administration. As time passed, traffic increased significantly, demanding adjustments to the introduced solutions to accommodate new volumes of ships passing through the entrances to the Baltic Sea. It is estimated that about 70,000 vessels are passaged via Kattegat yearly. Additionally, an increase in the traffic of fishing vessels and small pleasure crafts of different types has been observed, necessitating regulation to ensure the safety of navigation for everyone involved. Therefore, on the 1st of July 2020, a new routing system was introduced in the area of Kattegat by the decision of the International Maritime Organization (IMO). This paper focuses on the exact changes made and how those changes may influence the safety of navigation in Kattegat and the Sound, considering the COLREG rules and human factors in planning and executing passage via this area. A short presentation of recent accidents, and a study of difficulties arising from the new traffic organization, will be given. Brief traffic analysis is conducted using IWRAP MK II software, and historical AIS data from research will advance a more detailed examination and simulations. Finally, the introduced routing system’s effectiveness is compared using density plots from chosen periods. Furthermore, the analysis of the influence on the safety of navigation, as the introduced solution, is observed to be unusual. New routings have been in force for over two years and are accepted and used by most merchant vessels operating in Kattegat. Even so, this period is too short to clearly state that it is completely safe.