ANALYSIS OF NAVTEX MESSAGES PUBLISHED FOR THE MEDITERRANEAN REGION IN TERMS OF SAFE NAVIGATION OF SHIPS

Navigational Telex (NAVTEX) messages have a significant impact on the navigational safety of ships. NAVTEX plays an important role in decreasing the chances of near-misses, groundings, and collisions in the sea by disseminating safety-related information. In this study, it was aimed to present that navigational risk trend in a region could be revealed by analyzing NAVTEX messages. The analysis of NAVTEX messages as a data set will constitute a good data source for ship managers, researchers and seafarers who are navigating on the seas. Since there is no current research on NAVTEX messages in terms of navigational safety focused on Mediterranean Sea in the literature, this study aimed to fill this gap. The NAVTEX messages that pertain to the Mediterranean region were examined in the notice to mariners bulletin published by the Turkish Naval Forces Office of Navigation, Hydrography and Oceanography between 2019 and 2022. The examination was limited to messages broadcast from Antalya station. The study employed the document analysis method. The distribution of the number of messages by year, the annual distribution of messages by topic, and the annual distribution of messages by type were determined as the main research questions. It has been observed that studying the trends of NAVTEX messages can provide significant data about the region. It has been evaluated that this approach will contribute to the decision-making mechanisms of ship managers, particularly seafarers, and can serve as a source of information for rule makers. This study was produced by developing the undergraduate thesis titled "Review of NAVTEX Messages for the Mediterranean Sea Published in Notice to Mariners", which was completed successfully in June 2023.