Understanding how decision makers balance operational efficiency with environmental and ecological risks is central to vessel navigation. We model vessel speed as a control variable in a constrained optimization framework in which vessel operators balance multiple competing objectives, including transit efficiency, ice related navigational risk, and whale related ecological risk. The underlying risk parameters are estimated using over 14 million Automatic Identification System (AIS) observations from the United States Arctic (2010-2019), together with environmental covariates and spatially explicit whale density estimates. The framework incorporates a nonlinear risk objective, vessel heterogeneity, and regularization to ensure stable and interpretable results. The inferred trade offs reveal distinct decision making patterns across vessel groups and navigational statuses. Vessel types such as Tug Tow and Cargo balance operational speed with environmental and ecological considerations. In contrast, several vessel groups, including Fishing, Passenger, and Unspecified vessels, are strongly influenced by ice related risk, while Pleasure Craft and Tankers exhibit higher sensitivity to whale related risk. Across navigational status categories, similar heterogeneity is observed. The dominant status, under way using engine, displays a clear trade off, whereas other statuses, such as aground and undefined, are strongly shaped by ice related constraints. Statuses including restricted maneuverability and engaged in fishing exhibit higher estimated sensitivity to whale related risk, though with substantial uncertainty. Sensitivity analysis indicates that increasing whale-related risk weighting produces limited changes in model-implied optimal speed, whereas increasing ice-related risk leads to more consistent reductions.

翻译：理解决策者如何平衡运营效率与环境生态风险是船舶航行的核心问题。我们将船舶速度建模为约束优化框架中的控制变量，在该框架中船舶运营者需权衡多个竞争性目标，包括航行效率、冰相关航行风险以及鲸类相关生态风险。利用来自美国北极地区（2010-2019年）超过1400万条自动识别系统观测数据，结合环境协变量与空间显式鲸类密度估算结果，对潜在风险参数进行估计。该框架整合了非线性风险目标函数、船舶异质性及正则化处理，以确保结果的稳定性与可解释性。推断出的权衡关系揭示了不同船舶群体及航行状态下的差异化决策模式。拖轮船舶和货船等船型在运营速度与生态环境考量间取得平衡，而渔船、客船及未指定船舶等群体则显著受冰相关风险影响；休闲船舶和油轮对鲸类相关风险表现出更高敏感度。在不同航行状态分类中同样观察到类似的异质性：主要航行状态"使用发动机航行"呈现出清晰的权衡特征，而"搁浅"和"未定义"等其他状态则受冰相关约束的强烈影响。"机动受限"和"从事捕鱼"等状态虽对鲸类风险敏感度估算值较高，但伴随显著不确定性。敏感性分析表明，提高鲸类风险权重对模型最优速度影响有限，而提高冰相关风险权重则导致更一致的速度降低。