Analysis of the possible effects of Canal Istanbul project on the Turkish straits ship traffic system through simulation technique

The population of ships, which play the role of the contractor of a large part of the rapidly increasing trade volume in the world, tends to increase day by day. This increase causes to be threatened in all respects of the straits in important points. The Turkish Strait System (TBS), which includes the Istanbul and Çanakkale Straits, which play a critical role for many countries, is at great risk due to the increasing ship density and tanker traffic. Ensure the reduction of risks TBS ship traffic regime constraints, negatively affect the duration and number of ships in the system. Queuing structures created by the duration of their stay at the North and South entrance points of the straits are the biggest cause of negativity and cause bottlenecks. The Canal Istanbul Project, which is the only transit route between the Black Sea and Marmara Sea, which can be an alternative to the Bosphorus, has been brought to the agenda in order to overcome these problems. The aims of this thesis is to present a study to analyze the possible effects of Canal Istanbul, which has been developed as an alternative to the above mentioned negativities, on the existing TBS ship traffic. SIMIO, one of the simulation-based software programs, was used in the analysis. Comparative analyzes were made with scenarios created on different models.