EFFECTIVENESS OF PASSENGER EVACUATION PERFORMANCE FOR

DESIGN, OPERATION & TRAINING USING FIRST-PRINCIPLES

SIMULATION TOOLS

D. Vassalos, L. Guarin, M. Bole, J. Majumder, G. C. Vassalos and H.S. Kim

The Passenger Evacuation Group of the Ship Stability Research Centre (SSRC)
Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering of the Universities of Glasgow
and Strathclyde, Scotland, UK

Abstract
Unlike earlier models, Evi has been developed from the outset for application to passenger ships in a sea
environment, targeting the largest cruise liners and ROPAX. Utilising an advanced evacuation
simulation tool, code-named Evi (Evacuability index), it is the main target of the Passenger
Evacuation Group of the SSRC to develop a risk-based framework to support a systematic analysis
of passenger evacuation risk at sea for given pertinent (fire/smoke, flooding, stranding) scenarios,
environment, passenger distribution and demographics in a way that allows for interaction and
iteration to address risk prevention/reduction through passive (design) and active (operation) means
to ascertain a priory that ALL people on board can be evacuated. In this respect all evacuation
issues pertaining to design/operation/regulation/training can be dealt with cost-effectively. This
paper, provides an outline of recent developments and research with focus on this main direction; in
particular real-time interactive simulation for onboard decision support (supported by the CRAFT
project COMAND), passenger escape in flooding and fire scenarios accounting for crew
functionality (supported by the EUREKA project SAFENVSHIP), passenger abandonment and
recovery (supported by the EU STREP project SAFECRAFTS)
.
1. INTRODUCTION
In the wake of the Estonia (Ro-Ro/passenger ship) disaster and with trends of largely increased
capacity of passenger ships, with people onboard now ranging up to 6,000, the issue of effective
passenger evacuation, it being the last line of defence, in an emergency has been brought to the
centre of attention of the maritime industry worldwide. However, the process of evacuating a large
passenger ship is a very complex one, not least because it involves the management of a large
number of people on a complex moving platform, of which they normally have very little
knowledge. These characteristics make ship evacuation quite different to evacuation from airplanes
and buildings.

To address the risk associated with passenger evacuation at sea, the term Evacuability (passenger
evacuation performance capability) has been devised entailing a wide range of capabilities that
encompass evacuation time, identification of potential bottlenecks, assessment of layout, life saving
appliances, passenger familiarisation with a ship’s environment, crew training, effective evacuation
procedures/strategies, intelligent decision support systems for crisis management and
design/modification for ease of evacuation. From a technical point of view, the mass evacuation of
thousands of people from an extremely complex environment with unknown inaccessibility
problems exacerbated by (potentially co-existing) incidents such as progressive flooding,
fire/smoke and the inherent uncertainty deriving from unpredictability of human behaviour, is a
problem with severe modelling difficulties at system, procedural and behavioural levels.

Evacuation has been a high priority in the International Maritime Organisation’s (IMO) agenda
since 1999 when SOLAS imposed evacuation analysis to be carried out early in the design stage of
new Ro-Ro passenger ships. Following this, the Fire Protection Sub-Committee, after three years

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of work, issued in February 2002 a set of revised Interim Guidelines for new Ro-Ro passenger ships
– new cruise ships and existing Ro-Ro passenger ships on a voluntary basis - to be carried out either
by simplified analysis or computer-based advanced analysis. Such analysis would allow for
assessment at the design stage of passive safety (in-built) of the ship evacuation system only, while
operational safety, pertaining to any measures to enhance emergency preparedness and to better
manage crisis in case of an emergency, is only dealt with by means of a safety factor. In this
respect, the IMO evacuation scenarios address issues relating to layout and availability of primary
evacuation routes as well as passenger distribution and response times but does not address any real
emergencies and hence the need to prepare for these trough better planning, training and decision
support, all related to the functionality of the crew onboard, which is as crucial to passenger
mustering as a good layout of the escape routs. Breaking away from the traditional approach of the
marine industry SSRC has recently developed and tested (including full scale trials) procedures for
modelling crew functionality and assessing effectiveness of crew in support of RINA’s
developments and launching of the first ever notation dedicated to operational aspects. This new
concept makes evacuation analysis much more relevant offering real “means” for enhancing
passenger evacuation performance as well as incentivizing passenger ship owners to improve
emergency procedures.

Following a brief explanation of evacuability and Evi 3.0 and the maritime context of the
evacuation problem, a number of recent developments and research pertinent to passenger
evacuation at sea are highlighted, including developments of Evi 4.0, the fourth generation
evacuation simulation program developed by the SSRC Passenger Evacuation Group which focuses
on higher automation, hence efficiency and flexibility in simulation, whilst improving accuracy and
speed.

2. EVACUABILITY
Before proceeding with the intricacies of evacuation, it is important to define the problem we try to
solve and the degree to which this problem is formulated adequately for any evacuation analysis,
conducted through numerical simulations, to be meaningful. In general, the ability to evacuate a
ship environment within a given time and for given initial conditions (Evacuability) may be defined
as follows (see Figure 1):
E = f {env, d, r(t), s(ni); t }

Thus, Evacuability is a function of a set of initial conditions, env, d and r(t), and evacuation
dynamics, s(ni), as explained next.
Initial Conditions: the following initial conditions (env, d, r(t)) should be defined and remain fixed
during the execution of the simulation:
• env: ship environment model, pertaining to geometry, topology and domain semantics. For any
comparisons to be meaningful we need to assume a time invariant environment for evacuation
simulations. An environment changing with time (e.g., blocking doors and exits online) could
not easily allow for quantifiable assessment of these effects, as it would be very difficult to
repeat any such action in precisely the same state of the simulated system. However, the ability
to change the environment online could offer a strong basis for crew training and for decision
support in crisis management. Moreover, fire/smoke spreading and progressive flooding, the
principal hazards giving rise to the need to evacuate, result in a time varying environment.
Hence for any comparisons concerning global and local effects to be meaningful, any
environment changes ought to be affected in a deterministic way.
• d: initial conditions of the evacuation problem, pertaining to spatial and temporal demographics
of the people onboard. People in the environment will actually be randomly distributed with the
possibility of fixing some initial values, e.g., placing handicapped people on the embarkation
decks and/or near an exit. As such, the initial distribution of people's demographics ought to be

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 sampled to identify its effect on evacuability. The latter could be avoided if the distribution is
known with sufficient accuracy (confidence) that a specific spatial distribution in a given time is
taken to define a specific scenario for any operational or design purposes.
• r(t): response time, which according to the IMO definition, is intended to reflect the total time
spent in pre-evacuation movement activities beginning with the sound of the alarm. This
includes issues such as cue perception provision and interpretation of instructions, individual
reaction times, and performance of all other miscellaneous pre-evacuation activities. In
addition, in-situ response time or any change in the state of a moving agent through intervention
of e.g., crew ought to be considered. Response (awareness) time is certainly a random variable
hence it has to be sampled for various distributions in order to evaluate its effect on
evacuability.

Environment (env) Awareness Time (r)

• Geometry • Initial reaction time

• Topology • In-situ reaction time
• Semantics
E
Walking speed (s)
Distribution (d)
• Mobility impairment index
Spatial location (Gender, age, mobility impairment)
of people • Evacuation plan
• Crew Functionality
Figure 1: The concept of Evacuability (E)

Evacuation Dynamics: relates specifically to walking speed, which constitutes the main motion
variable of evacuation dynamics as explained next:
• s(ni):walking speed of individual flow units (agents/persons). The fact that each person onboard
is dealt with as an individual flow unit and that every procedural (evacuation plan) / functional
(crew assistance) / behavioural (microscopic behaviour) parameter could be accounted for as a
multiplicative factor ascertaining walking speed, provides for a unique and relatively easy way
for simulating evacuation, essentially being able to deal with the effect of all of these parameters
by simply following a given evacuation plan, accounting for crew assistance in some agreed
quantifiable way and then sample walking speed for each individual flow unit from a
corresponding distribution dependent on the environment and demographics. Using the relevant
mobility impairment index (MII) the walking speed in each case can straightforwardly be
calculated. From a development of realistic simulation of evacuation point of view, a great deal
of effort may have to be expended to accurately quantify MII for all the pertinent microscopic
behaviour as well as for specific crew assistance.

On the basis of the above thinking, it may be stated that evacuability is a well-defined problem that
can be formulated and solved (simulated) for given initial conditions and passenger flow
parameters.

3. THE MARITIME CONTEXT

Flooding and fire (and stranding) constitute the principal hazards that may lead to passenger
evacuation. If these hazards develop into an uncontrollable situation, it must be ascertained a priory
that ALL people on board can be evacuated safely. Evacuation analysis should therefore be aimed
at developing a system (a minimum standard of evacuability) that guarantees this assertion to an
acceptable level by utilising advanced consequence analysis tools for flooding, fire and evacuation

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within a risk-based framework. Evacuability in this respect represents a risk measure of passenger
evacuation at sea expressed as an index, for a given pertinent scenario, environment, passenger
distribution and demographics and initial response time. Developing such a system will ensure
focus on passenger safety in a systematic and all embracing way that safeguards against the
consequences from given (design) flooding and/or fire scenarios that may lead to abandoning a ship
or mustering to a safe refuge onboard, by providing an active link between the two; in particular the
likelihood of these scenarios occurring and the ensuing consequences in a way that allows for
systematic risk prevention/reduction through passive (design) and active (operation) means. In this
respect, one can deal cost-effectively with design/operation/regulation/training issues. This
constitutes the main target of the Passenger Evacuation Group of the SSRC utilising an advanced
evacuation simulation tool, code-named Evi (Evacuability index, Evi), developed from the outset
for application to the largest cruise liners and Ropax in a sea environment.

4. EVACUABILITY INDEX (Evi) - CURRENT DEVELOPMENTS

The mathematical modelling used in the development of the current version (Evi 3.0) of the
evacuation simulation program has been explained in detailed in [2]. The main strength of the
modelling derives from the ability to utilise high and low level planning interchangeably (macro-
and microscopic modelling respectively, referred to as mesoscopic model) and to account for
human behaviour realistically by adopting multi-agent modelling techniques. In terms of low-level
planning, Evi treats space as a continuum – unlike other models that treat the ship area as a mosaic
of square grids [4, 5] – and the process of an agent moving from one point of reference to another
becomes a process of pursuing a static target. The choice of direction of movement in the presence
of other agents and/or obstacles, is approached by combining grid-based techniques and social
forces model (hybrid approach, see Figure 2) thus utilising both the effectiveness of grid-based
techniques and the flexibility of social force methods. In order to simplify calculations, a range of
discrete decisions is established around the agent with the objective of identifying the one that will
allow the agent to travel as fast as possible (given its nominal speed) towards the local target. In
addition, a continuous local (social/personal) space is established around each agent which other
agent will aim to avoid. This space is used to prevent deadlock situations when the number of
agents in an area becomes too high (density increases). The agents make a decision of the best use
of personal space to resolve any conflicts that may arise. As a result, this approach allows the
evacuation process to be modelled in sufficient detail and still run ”fast” for applications even with
the largest cruise ships.

Grid based techniques Hybrid approach (Evi) Social force models

Figure 2: Space modelling techniques

One of the primary objectives of the development of Evi-3.0 was the definition of a coding model
that could be easily adapted to future needs and directions of evacuation simulation within the
industry. This combined with the introduction of an intuitive user interface, standardised data files
based on Extensible Markup Language (XML) and a range of supporting tools allows also the
program to be operated for any main stream software application. Evi's continuous space, discrete
decision pedestrian motion model can flexibly adapt to the complexities of any ship's geometry and
topology. In Evi 3.0, agents are considered as vehicular transport systems capable of carrying

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information, interacting with other agents and autonomously travelling around the ship
environment. By programming individual agents to perform certain tasks with elements called
Objectives and Messages, it is possible to reproduce any evacuation procedure (or egress scenario,
not necessarily associated with an emergency) by incorporating the actions specified in e.g. the
vessels' muster list or disembarkation procedure. These elements make Evi an interactive and
flexible simulation tool.
Interactive simulation (giving objectives and messages)
The majority of evacuation simulation tools work on the premise that large proportions of the
population head for a low number of exits or safe zones. However, in ship evacuation this is not
always the case. In Cruise ships, for example, personal lifejackets are stored in passenger cabins,
meaning that each individual must travel to their cabin before heading to assembly stations.
Furthermore, in large passenger vessels, crew are actively used to assist the egress process to ensure
that passengers reach assembly stations in a rapid and orderly manner. Moreover, in specific
emergency situations (scenarios) the role of the crew is the most important factor of the evacuation
process.

All the above imposes an additional set of requirements upon the simulation tool. For instance, in
order to model all passengers returning to cabin, agents will require individual routes that will take
them from anywhere in the ship to their cabin before they can join the main evacuation routes.
Crew will require unique routes through the ship environment to allow them to perform specific
emergency tasks. However, while modelling of crew may seem like a large task, the intension is
only to address behaviour where crew affect passengers during evacuation. By focusing on the key
elements that affect the evacuation process as defined by Evacuability (see section 2), it is only
necessary to model interactions that involve change of reaction time, walking speed and route.
Thus, in Evi, rather than considering an agent as one component, these requirements can be
addressed by splitting it into two parts, a vehicle part, still termed “agent”, which follows a defined
route exhibiting pedestrian dynamics behaviour, and a driver part, known as an “objective” which
defines the route and any changes to reaction time and speed for the agent. This model allows for
one type of agent and many different types of behaviour (objectives) which can be potentially
changed on meeting certain situations, by other agents or interactively by the user.

Evacuate
Find Lifejacket
in cabin
“Objective” Search
Cabins
Available
Evacuate to
safe exit “Objectives”

Lost!
Route, Speed,
Timing information

Wait

“Agent”

Standard The Evi

(Single Objective) (Replaceable Objective)
Agent Agent

Figure 3: Evi agents have replaceable objectives which allow them to perform a wide range of
different activities

By using “Objectives”, a wide range of behaviour can be modelled in the simulation. However,
without inter-agent communication, it is impossible for one agent to influence another beyond the

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interactions that occur at the pedestrian dynamics level. Through the introduction of a messaging
system, a mechanism that allows agents (and the user) to dispatch information into the environment,
agents can influence each other. The Evi messaging system allows two type of communication:

• Environment wide messages: can be used to model the effect of the PA system or individual
crew radios and a dispatched message will be broadcast in all area. An example of the use of
this system is for the recall of crew once all passengers have evacuated.
• Spoken messages: originate from a dispatching agent’s location and are only capable of being
received over a certain distance. Doors modify message distance information allowing agents to
hear messages from nearby spaces without hearing through walls and a diffusion effect is
introduced. An example of the use of spoken messages in Evi can be found where agents come
across blocked doors and communicate this information back through the crowd resulting in a
change of route.

Figure 4: A searching crew agent passes an open door to a public area; passenger agents within the
message range are roused and evacuate

Once agents within the simulation tool can be programmed at individual level and can interact with
each other, crew behaviour can be modelled. Passenger agents can only send messages, and it is up
to the receiving agents to act upon the information. However, crew agents differ from passengers in
that they can explicitly change the behaviour of passenger agents. Based on the type of “Objective”
that has been assigned, a crew agent will change the route, reaction time or speed of passenger
agents in the locality. Using these key elements of the Evacuability concept, a crew agent can
represent any of the main crew behaviour required for evacuation. In Evi 3.0, crew can be
programmed to search cabins, public areas (reduce awareness time) as well as guide people in
stairways, with additional “objectives” for re-routing congested passengers and embarking groups
of assembled passengers to lifeboats, etc. More complex tasks can also be defined by scheduling of
the Objectives. As evacuation procedures may differ between different ship types and operators,
Objectives provide a fundamental technique for accurately defining appropriate responses to any
emergency scenario. The system utilises a modern graphical user interface within a virtual reality
environment.
Effectiveness of crew procedures
In cooperation with a Classification Society, the above-described capabilities were recently used to
assess the effectiveness of crew procedures in a large passenger ship. In that study, the following
crew procedures were simulated, largely based on the guidelines laid out in MSC/Circ. 1033 [1], but

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modified to address the evacuation procedures of the evaluated vessel. The major differences (in
relation to MSC\Circ.1033) can be summarised as follows:

a. Personal life jackets are stored within an individual’s assigned cabins. Consequently,
individuals must travel to their cabin to retrieve their lifejacket before proceeding to their
assigned assembly station. For day cases, this may add a significant overhead to travel time and
raise the potential for congestion due to the occurrence of counter-flow, particularly on
stairways.
b. In reviewing the performance of crew procedures, the activities of members directly interacting
with passengers are modelled in terms of the those searching passenger areas (reducing
awareness time and directing lost passengers) and those guiding on stairways (increasing
walking speed and directing lost passengers).
c. The introduction of a proportion of the passenger population which will be “lost” i.e. will have
difficult finding their way to their (known) destination.

In order to simulate these behaviours within the software the following objectives were introduced:

ReturnToCabin: in day cases, each passenger is explicitly assigned a random cabin. This process is
performed across the population based on each cabin’s assigned capacity. On assigning the
ReturnToCabin objective to simulation agents, a route is generated, taking agents back to their
cabin where they will wait for an assigned time.

Search2: crewmembers searching cabins will normally use the Search2 Objective. This Objective
will continually route the crew agent around the assigned set of search locations on the basis of the
next closest space. This procedure continues until all passengers have reached assembly stations,
where after, a message is sent to all crew to proceed to their own assembly station. A searching
crewmember will allocate route information to any lost passengers and reduce the awareness time
of any “non-roused” passengers within a searched space before proceeding to the next. Passengers
are roused by either reducing there awareness time to minimum allowed by the IMO guidelines or
by assigning a new awareness time based on the instant the crew meets the passenger (simulations
have been performed with the latter method). The subsequent passenger awareness time is always
the minimum of the original assigned awareness time and any new awareness time given. In the set
of simulations performed for this analysis, a new awareness time was supplied to passengers based
on a uniform distribution of 60 ±18 seconds as this was felt to be a more realistic process.

InspectClear: crewmembers searching public spaces will normally use the InspectClear Objective.
The search pattern functions in exactly the same way as the Search2 Objective. However, the main
difference is that the crew agent will wait for the searched space to become empty before
proceeding to the next.

Control: crewmembers guiding passengers, primarily in stairwells, assist by providing route

information to any lost passengers and increasing their walking speed. Speed is increased by the
same multiplying factor across the whole population and door flow rates in the locality are adjusted
similarly to remove any unnecessary constraint. A value of 10% increase in nominal speed has
been used throughout.

Lost: Passengers assigned as “lost” are considered to know their destination but not the way to it.
This replaces the previous implementation of lost behaviour in which passengers select doors to exit
through at random, until reaching an active crewmember or their destination. This initial approach
was found to increase congestion beyond a reasonable level and resulted in many passengers being
unable to reach their destination. The new implementation opens up the possibility that lost
passengers may enquire nearby non-lost passengers to get some idea of how to reach their assigned

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destination. Particularly, if fellow non-lost passengers are heading for a place close to or the same
as the lost passenger’s destination, then the lost agent will follow this guide while being taken
closer to the assigned destination. If, in the process, the lost passenger gets close to the known
destination (<15 m away, chosen by reasonable assessment) and on the same deck, the passenger is
considered to have found a familiar location and will travel the remaining distance without need for
further assistance. While in the process of following a fellow passenger, the lost passenger keeps
looking for other passers-by who might be heading for a place closer still than the current guide. If
one is found, the lost passenger selects the passer-by as the new guide. In the case where the
Objective is to evacuate and a large number of passengers are non-lost and evacuating, such
behaviour will almost always lead to those lost evacuating properly by following others. This
revision is a result from experimental observations made during evacuation trials that took place last
summer, where people in doubt were found to invariably follow nearby passengers. The method of
specifying people as lost remains the same, i.e. as a percentage proportion of the population.

The notion of ranking closeness of destinations, for example while attempting to switch guides is
not based on the comparison of Euclidian distance between destinations as this would not represent
the typical communication and judgment that would actually take place in such decisions. Instead
we define a few discrete levels of closeness in order of priority, as follows:

• Same destination region (highest closeness rank)

• Same fire-zone and same deck
• Same deck but not same fire-zone
• Same fire-zone but not same deck
• None of the above but the same side - port or starboard (lowest closeness rank)

Using the muster list, the best approach in representing procedures is to separate the information
down into crewmembers required for each location, in terms of deck/fire-zone/ship-side for
searching and stairway/deck for guiding procedures. Using this approach, procedures can be
quickly entered in the format required by the simulation software. Crew tasks can be assigned
directly either to a crewmember selected at random within a particular space or at random from the
crew population, this being handled by the present implementation of the “Procedure Builder”.
With the procedure in place, demographics are assigned subsequently. Crew awareness times take
account of whether individual agents have tasks to perform (dictated by the assignment of an
Objective) or will follow the general evacuation procedure. Crewmembers without specific tasks to
perform are simulated as if they were passengers although without making any contribution to
passenger evacuation results. Once demographics have been assigned, the passenger procedures are
addressed in terms of the requirement to return to cabins and the number that will be considered as
lost. In those scenarios where crewmembers with tasks are considered passive, Objectives are
assigned so that crew agents will travel to the location where the active procedure is carried out but
will not influence any passengers. In some circumstances, this may mean that the crewmember will
become an obstacle to the flow.
Case Study
Taking into account the above a number of day and night time scenarios were evaluated, including
cases with different initial location of passengers (open decks, theatre, restaurants, etc). The
simulations were carried out for a large cruise liner of about 300m in length, with about 2,700
passengers and 920 crewmembers of whom 164 perform emergency tasks (active crew). The
results demonstrate that the evaluated vessel has in general very good evacuation capabilities in
terms of the procedures considered within the current IMO evacuation guidelines [1]. The modern
design, a simple general arrangement where longitudinal corridors directly connect to stairways
leading out to the assembly stations allows for a reasonable quick assembly, considering the number
of passengers involved. Significant congestion (signified by local passenger densities beyond 4

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persons per squared metre for more than 10% of the assembly time) was rarely observed across the
cases prior to the application of the full evacuation procedures.

Notwithstanding the above, when the actual procedures on board were modelled (full evacuation
procedure in which passengers are prompted to return to their cabins and crew influence the
evacuation process) the main observation is the increased level of congestion due to counter flow.
Indeed, in all day cases, local density in many of the stairways around deck 3 were above 4 persons
per squared metre for about 15% of the assembly time duration.

Accepting that the need for passengers to return to cabins to collect life jackets is a part of large
passenger ship evacuation procedures, it is interesting to note that appropriate timing of procedures
can significantly reduce levels of congestion.

For the night case with crew procedures in place, it is interesting to note that crew searching
passenger cabins were able to clear the accommodation decks before crew in cabins on lower decks
became aware. Consequently, passengers were able to travel down this particular stairway before
being restricted by crew travelling up to their assembly station. Although it is noted that awareness
time is an key assumption of the present IMO guidelines, it would seem that there is a good
argument for trying to separate the flow of those passengers returning to cabins and those travelling
to assembly stations, by staggering the procedure timing or using different stairways for each flow.

The size of staircases may be a contributing factor in the formation of congestion during counter
flow situations. Smaller crew staircase used in evacuation may congest much more easily than
larger main staircases (see Figure 5). Certainly, for large passenger vessels where the “return to
cabins” is common, it is something that should be investigated in more detail. Moreover, as this
analysis is one of the first instances where the operational evacuation procedures have been
reviewed against existing regulations and guidelines, it should be noted that the rules governing the
size of staircases only consider unidirectional flow during evacuation and it may be prudent to
review the design of stairways used in evacuation to accommodate counter flow where these
particular procedures are in place. It should be kept in mind that the simulations have been based
on the routes defined in the evacuation plans and in the case of situations such as the one shown in
Figure 5, passenger agents are not given the choice of following a route that would allow them to
move into the next fire zone to use the less congested stairway. In this instant, it would appear that
there is scope to use crew to re-route passengers away from crowded routes.

Figure 5: Counter flow on a smaller crew staircase

while the larger staircase in the adjoining fire zone remains clear

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Evi 4.0
The first design of the evacuation simulation model as implemented in versions 1.0 through 3.x has
proved adequate for modelling evacuation in a wide class of scenarios. However, certain
shortcomings have been identified through experience and feedback from a large number of
research and commercial evacuation studies, which SSRC is seeking to address in a new design
(Evi-4.0). In summary the new developments relate to the following:

• Creation of the evacuation model from CAD drawings: the available CAD drawings of the
shipboard environment are line drawings, while the existing tool (Evi-3.0) requires the
environment in the form of a set of convex regions. This entails that the entire shipboard
environment should be drawn over again. This is labour intensive and should be automated.
• Environment modelling: in the new version 4.0 of Evi the whole ship is treated as a single
manifold modelled as a 2D geometric complex, composed of triangular simplexes. The
triangulation has similar navigational properties as the convex segmentation of the current
version. This will allow modelling a cluttered environment (e.g., one with a lot of complex
furniture and obstacles) without sacrificing faithfulness to the actual geometry. Important
entities like spiral staircases and ladders can thus be accommodated. In this respect, one can
plan navigational paths on the dual graph of the triangulation in the same way as one does for
the door graph in the current version [2]. The advantage here is that it can be shown that the
dual of the triangulation is a planar graph, for which the path planning can be done very
efficiently. This model is illustrated in Figure 6.
• Reporting of results: Improved user interface

Figure 6: New environment representation (triangulation) – improved path planning

A: a cluttered environment as in a CAD drawing; B: its generated 3D extrusion; C: the triangulation
graph and its dual (in the dual graph the vertices are red dots and edges are green lines). D: two
sample navigational paths (agents’ paths) in the environment

In Evi-4.0, the available CAD drawings are processed to generate the environment description. This
problem is quite complex and has been addressed by decomposition into sub-problems. As a
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solution, what there is in place is a processing pipeline of modules, each of which addresses a sub-
problem, as explained next:
⇒ A module for graphics recognition using geometric hashing and affine-invariant matching that
recognizes special patterns in the drawing;
⇒ A module that clusters segments in the line drawing to recognize the individual decks in a full
GA;
⇒ A module that converts image GAs into vector graphics form and another that reconstructs
arbitrary staircase geometry from its plan view.
⇒ A module that corrects drafting errors through cross snapping and removal of coincident lines
and another that converts pixel coordinates in image GAs into world coordinates.
⇒ A module that performs triangulation of the drawing and another that performs planar loop
detection in the drawing, and still another that performs clustering in the space of (affine-
invariant) shape signatures of the planar loops.

Each of these modules is quite interesting in isolation and their full description would take much
more space than this paper can permit.
Evi in the Maritime Context
In addition to the current work on enhancing the capabilities of the simulation tool itself to allow
modelling crew emergency tasks, a number of research projects are underway at the SSRC dealing
with all aspects of Evacuability in the maritime context. In this respect, one of the targets is to
provide a platform for ship design in which safety is treated as another design objective – not a
prescriptive design constraint. Such an approach permit investigating and quantifying the
consequences of critical hazards for different scenarios in which Evacuation is part of the chain of
events. In this case, appropriate risk control measures can be incorporated at the design/operation
stage with consideration of other performance and cost related criteria so that a desired safety level
is achieved cost-effectively.

Among those developments, the integration of first-principles simulation tools used to quantify the
time line development and consequences of flooding and fire/smoke scenarios is being addressed as
part of collaborative National and EU funded research projects. Notably, the SAFENVSHIPS
project is a large collaborative project, involving 11 participants from six European countries. The
aim of SAFENVSHIP is to develop, evaluate and validate methodologies and tools for design of the
next generation cruise and ferry ships related to safety (fire protection, structural reliability and
evacuation) and environment (clean sea and air). Within SAFENVSHIP, the Evi team is dealing
with all modelling aspects pertaining to the whole process of evacuation (mustering, embarkation
and abandonment) in different environments and scenarios and the validation of such through
analysis of the quantitative information gathered from full scale trials and purposely undertaken
experiments. In this respect, full scale trials onboard a large passenger ship were undertaken during
the summer of 2003. The trials were planned to investigate and quantify individual (agent’s) travel
time and walking speed, flow rate through doors, and congestion (behaviour in queues and stairs),
which is necessary to support the validation and verification of the simulation model Evi as well as
some of the assumptions implicit in the current IMO guidelines for advanced evacuation analysis.
In total, five tests were conducted within one of the ship’s fire zone with 500 crewmembers
participating as evacuees. In a wider sense, the outcome of the tests demonstrates that the impact of
the crew in ship evacuation is paramount and its modelling is essential to achieve a meaningful
representation of the process, as crew can potentially affect all the factors of Evacuability.

Part of the above activities is also the zone model approach for modelling fire/smoke propagation in
ship layouts and structures being developed at the SSRC [6] with a view to integrate fire/smoke and
evacuation in a way that is consistent with new SOLAS regulations on alternative design
arrangements (Regulation 17 of SOLAS Chapter II). The same integration has already been

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realised with existing seakeeping simulation tools capable of addressing large scale progressive
flooding (for collision and/or grounding scenarios – CRAFT Project COMAND).

In a much wider perspective, existing simulation tools for evacuation mainly deal with the assembly
process; embarkation is not explicitly modelled, due mainly to a “gap” in operational feedback as
well as in theoretical and experimental knowledge. The EU-funded project SAFECRAFTS
(www.safecrafts.org), in which the SSRC is a partner (Work Package Leader), seeks to fill these
gaps and will not only target to improve current rescue systems but will also attempt to develop new
LSA concepts. In the process, SAFECRAFTS activities would be focused on investigating and
quantifying the performance of LSA systems (and the whole process of reaching the rescue vessel
in a safe and reliable manner) by using a first-principles approach (in terms of hydromechanics,
mechanics, human behaviour). This will be used in the context of a quantitative risk assessment
and emergency management for the design of rescue systems for passengers and crew, addressing
both hardware and procedures/management. In this respect physical model tests and full-scale tests
will play a decisive role. The outcome of this project is expected to allow the enhancement of
evacuation simulation tools to explicitly address the embarkation/launching as well as rescue
processes.

5. CONCLUDING REMARKS
Five years since the introduction of the first Interim Guidelines for a Simplified Evacuation
Analysis, developments around the world concerning evacuation in the maritime context have
increased in a staggering pace and research activities through multi-million projects are paving the
way towards holistic approaches that address this problem as part of design/operation/training,
systematically and scientifically.

The Passenger Evacuation Group at SSRC are involved in all the facets of these developments and
are playing a leading role in the modelling and application of passenger evacuation simulation in
the marine sector, through a large number of industrial and research projects.

6. REFERENCES
1. IMO (2002), “Interim Guidelines for Evacuation Analysis of New and Existing Passengers
Ships”, MSC/Circ.1033, June 2002.
2. Vassalos D., Kim H., Christiansen G., Majumder J. (2001), “A Mesoscopic Model for
Passenger Evacuation in a Virtual Ship-Sea Environment and Performance-Based
Evaluation”, Pedestrian and Evacuation Dynamics – April 4-6, 2001 – Duisburg.
3. NFPA (1995), “SFPA Fire Protection Engineering Handbook”, 2nd Edition, US National
Fire Protection Association, 1995
4. www.fseg.gre.ac.uk/exodus/
5. www.germanlloyd.org/aeneas/aeneas.html
6. Shigunov V. (2004), “Fire Development and Smoke Propagation in Ship Compartments”,
Schiffstechnik Bd.51 – 2004/Ship Technology Research Vol. 51 - 2004.

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