An algorithm for finding the shortest sailing distance from any maritime navigable point to a designated port

Many simulations and deployment analyses use networks to evaluate ship paths at sea. Ships are constrained to travel along links between specified nodes. When ships may need to change their destination while at sea, the network path can deviate significantly from an actual shortest path. Additionally, when it is desired to initialize simulation data from actual ship positions, ships must move to a node to use the network. By triangulating open navigable water areas, a shortest path from all points at sea to selected ports can be calculated. A Delaunay triangulation of the open areas can be calculated in O(n log n). Using the Delaunay triangulation, the shortest path triangulation from a point (port) can be calculated in O(nk) where n is the number of points specifying the sea-land border and κ is the number of islands. The resulting data can provide distance from any point on the sea surface to the port in O(1) time when the triangle containing the point is known, or in O(n2) if the triangle must be determined.