An Evacuation Model for Passenger Ships That Includes the Influence of Obstacles in Cabins

Abstract

Passenger behavior and ship environment are the key factors affecting evacuation efficiency. However, current studies ignore the interior layout of passenger ship cabins and treat the cabins as empty rooms. To investigate the influence of obstacles (e.g., tables and stools) on cabin evacuation, we propose an agent-based social force model for advanced evacuation analysis of passenger ships; this model uses a goal-driven submodel to determine a plan and an extended social force submodel to govern the movement of passengers. The extended social force submodel considers the interaction forces between the passengers, crew, and obstacles and minimises the range of these forces to improve computational efficiency. We drew the following conclusions based on a series of evacuation simulations conducted in this study: (1) the proposed model endows the passenger with the behaviors of bypassing and crossing obstacles, (2) funnel-shaped exits from cabins can improve evacuation efficiency, and (3) as the exit angle increases, the evacuation time also increases. These findings offer ship designers some insight towards increasing the safety of large passenger ships.

Passengers' likely behaviour based on demographic difference during an emergency evacuation in a Ro-Ro passenger ship

“…Currently, regarding the path-finding during emergency evacuation, some researchers have used mathematical models to analyse the path-finding behaviour of passengers (Kim et al, 2019;Ni et al, 2017;Kim et al, 2004). A number of researchers investigated the pathfinding behaviour of ship passengers.…”

“…For the evacuation analysis under the influence of obstacles of passenger ships, some researchers have studied the interaction between personnel and obstacles by combining the cellular automaton model or social force model, but the obstacles studied are mostly walls, tables, etc. (Ni et al, 2017;Ha et al, 2012;Vanem and Skjong, 2006). In the "Costa Concordia" accident, despite the heavy listing of the ship, there were still many elderly people who were reluctant to leave their luggage items until the rescuers force them to give up their personal belongings (Kvamme, 2017).…”

The design of the arrangement of evacuation routes on a passenger ship using the method of genetic algorithms

“…An agent based model was also presented in [ 11 ], however, the effect of obstacles in the cabins on the evacuation of passengers was considered. An important factor influencing the speed of people during evacuation is the presence of inclined surfaces on the ship.…”

Simulation of Passenger Evacuation Process in Cruise Ships Based on A Multi-Grid Model

“…Liu et al [28] simulated the evacuation process of an aircraft carrier with EXODUS [11] software, and obtained the relationship between exit width and escape time from the simulation results. Ni et al [29][30][31] proposed an agent-based social force model and the interaction between passengers and obstacles was taken into account. Moreover, the influence of life jackets on passengers' mobility was also added into the model and they simulated the evacuation process of passengers in different scenarios.…”