International Journal of Automation and Computing 2 (2006) 165-168
Problems Associated with Evacuation from the Ship in
Case of an Emergency Situation
Dorota H. Lozowicka
Department of Vessel Construction and Operation, Maritime University of Szczecin, Szczecin 72-500, Poland
Abstract: The problems associated with evacuation of people from the ship in an emergency situation are analyzed,
especially passenger ships are taken under consideration. The most dangerous accidents requiring evacuation are described.
Marine accidents often occur as eliminating all of the hazards to human health and life is still impossible. In every case,
the evacuation process from the ship must be taken under consideration. Evacuation route arrangement should provide the
possibility of safe departure from danger areas for passengers and crew members. Evacuation routes designed for human
interaction within the evacuation process and other important factors are reviewed. Additionally, the method for seeking
evacuation time as a function of initial distribution of passengers and evacuation routes choosing is suggested. A genetic
algorithm will be used, whilst the calculated evacuation time is connected with a fitness function. Parameters of evacuation
routes topology are coded as non-binary chromosomes. Genetic operators are fitted for such types of problems to avoid
receiving infeasible solutions. The objective of the proposed method is to find the evacuation time in worse case scenarios.
Keywords: Passenger ship, evacuation, genetic algorithm.
1
Introduction
Ship voyages as a means of travelling were made
only in the case of necessity 200 years ago. Sea voyages
were dangerous, unhealthy and monotonous. Only in
the mid-19th century were they made faster and safer
by new technologies. There have been, however, a lot
of unsolved problems in the scope of the ships’ technical safety, which is evidenced by numerous sea disasters
happening from time to time.
Attention should be focused, first of all, on passenger ships suited for the carriage of a large number of
persons: passengers and crew members. This can be
exemplified by cruise ships such as “Carnival Victory”,
built in 2000 for 3480 passengers and 1080 crew members, or the “Explorer of the Seas” (2000) for the carriage of 3860 passengers and 1180 crew members. The
length of passenger ships in many cases exceeds 300m,
as in the case of “Queen Mary II”, 345m in length, 2620
passengers and 1253 crew members.
2 Description of the most dangerous accidents which forced evacuation
process
A series of spectacular sea accidents with numerous
casualties were noted in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Amongst them can be counted the sinkings of the “Titanic” in 1912, the “Empress of Ireland” in 1914, and
———————
Manuscript received September 29, 2005; revised January 11,
2006.
∗
E-mail address: dorotalo@am.szczecin.pl
the “Donna Paz” in 1987 caused by the collision with
a tanker and a fire, with an estimated 4000 casualties.
The most dangerous accidents requiring evacuation
are the following:
- losing the stability
- fire
- collision
- running aground
- weather conditions
Marine accidents often occur because it is impossible to eliminate all hazards related threatening human
health and life. In every case, evacuation process from
the ship must be taken under consideration. Fire related accidents are one of the most dangerous due to
the rapid spread of the fire thus causing the immediate
need for evacuation. The spread to which the fire gases
spread influences the time available for people evacuation. In case of collision and losing stability, the time
the ship takes to sink depends on many factors and can
vary, as illustrated in Table 1.
Table 1
Time of passenger ships sinking[1,2]
Ship
Jupiter
Maiku
Andrea Doria
Michail Lermontov
Admiral Nakhimov
Royal Pacific
Empress of Ireland
Sinking reason
Collision
Collision
Collision
Reef
Collision
Collision
Collision
Sinking time
40 minutes
3 hours
12 hours
5 hours
8 minutes
10-15 minutes
14 minutes
An additional philosophy of design is to regard the
ship as its own best lifeboat. After extensive occurs,
the ship should be able to proceed to port under its
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International Journal of Automation and Computing 2 (2006) 165-168
own steam and without the need to evacuate. This
conception is called “safe haven”[3].
But yet, until all dangers for human safety at sea
can be eliminated, evacuation routes should be correctly designed so that all passengers have enough time
to leave danger areas.
3 Evacuation routes designing—review
and comment
A passenger ship can be a labyrinth for people staying onboard. Contrary to crew members, passengers
are not familiarized with the arrangement of corridors
and spaces within the ship. Construction, furnishing
and signing methods should still be improved to increase the safety level during cruises.
Evacuation routes arrangement should help the passengers and crew members safely leave danger areas.
There are few general rules about designing evacuation
routes for the ship.
“Stairways and ladders shall be arranged to provide
ready means of escape to the lifeboat and liferaft embarkation deck from all passengers and crew spaces and
from spaces which the crew is normally employed”.
“Below the bulkhead deck two means of escape, at
least one of which shall be independent of watertight
doors, shall be restricted from each watertight compartment.”
“Above the bulkhead deck there shall be at least
two means of escape from each main vertical zone (. . .)
at least one of which shall give access to a stairway
forming a vertical escape”.
“Stairways shall not be less than 900 mm in clear
width, shall be fitted with handrails on each side”[4] .
Materials used for ship cabins and corridors’ ceiling
and furniture can be very dangerous for human health
in case the fire progresses. Non-combustible materials should be used for designing ceiling and insulations
within the corridors and stair ways[4].
Burning materials are described by their thermal
characteristics:
- combustibility
- maximal temperature of the combustion
- flame spread rapidity
- combustion rapidity
- quantity, nature and intensity of toxic gases emission
- quantity, nature and intensity of visible smoke
emission
- ignition and auto-ignition temperature
- heat conductivity[5]
Materials for ceiling and furniture should not emit
too much toxic gases and smoke. All corridors and
staircases, connecting no more than two decks, should
be separated by incombustible divisions, class “B”.
Staircases connecting more than two decks should be
separated by divisions, class “A”.
4
Evacuation signs-description
Evacuation routes’ signing is a very important factor which influences people safety and the evacuation
process. Information about direction of escape helps
people find proper evacuation routes. As stated earlier, a passenger ship can be a labyrinth for passengers; in an emergency situation, often in dark or smoke
presence, they have to choose the direction of evacuation in every section of the route. Wrong decisions
can be dangerous for people. Appropriate connection
of signing and lightening give people the possibility
of safe evacuation. Evacuating in smoke-filled, darkened situation with low visibility can be life threatening. People become easily disoriented and panicked.
Without an emergency way-finding system the potential for slips, falls, injury or fatalities becomes greatly
increased. According to SOLAS rules[4] , in addition to
the emergency lighting required by regulations II-1/42
and III/11.5[4] , the means of escape, including stairways and exits, should be marked by lighting or photo
luminescent strip indicators placed not more than 0.3
m above the deck at all points of the escape route including angles and intersections. The markings must
enable passengers to identify all the routes of escape
and readily identify the escape exits. If electric illumination is used, it should be supplied by the emergency
source of power and it should also be arranged that
the failure of any single light or cut in a lighting strip
will not result in the marking being ineffective. Additionally, all escape route signs and fire equipment location markings shall be of photo-luminescent material or
marked by lighting. The Administration shall ensure
that such lighting or photo-luminescent equipment has
been evaluated, tested and applied in accordance with
the guidelines developed by the Organization by resolution A.752(18).
Proulx[6] created an experiment with such types
of signing. Volunteers evaluated the signing system.
Weakness of this system gave less light than conventional lightening. People coming from the illuminated
room needed a few seconds for acclimation, a fact that
can delay evacuation.
Withington[7] created an experiment at Leeds University with volunteers. Evacuation routes were filled
by non-toxic smoke. Volunteers were informed about
evacuation directions by sound signals. Evacuation
time in many cases was shorter by about 1/3. In January 2000, the test was repeated on a passenger ferry
within a dry dock. Twenty volunteers took part in the
experiment. It was concluded that a sound systems can
be used as an additional information source.
Building Research Establishment created an exper-
D. H. Lozowicka/Problems Associated with Evacuation from the Ship in Case of an Emergency Situation
iment with volunteers, using non-toxic smoke. Visibility of different types of evacuation signing depending
on smoke visibility was studied.
5 Evacuation time analysis by genetic
algorithm
A lot of different evacuation scenarios can appear
during real evacuation. Calculated evacuation time
is dependent on factors such as initial distribution of
the passengers, evacuation routes blocked by fire and
the flow of the passengers who can choose different
routes. This paper describes the use of a genetic algorithm for conducting a random search of combinations for the initial distribution of passengers. Calculated evacuation time is connected with a fitness function. Parameters of evacuation routes topology should
be coded as non-binary chromosomes. Genetic operators, crossover, mutation or inversion, should be fitted
for such types of problems to avoid receiving infeasible
solutions. The objective of the proposed method is to
find an evacuation time in a worst case scenario.
Evacuation routes for ship are described as a graph
G(N, E), where rooms are the nodes of graph and connections between them are represented by the graphs’
edges. For every ki , a random number of passengers is
imputed from compartment (0, ki max ), where ki max is
the maximal capacity of the node.
kj = (k1 , k2 , · · · , ki , · · · , kn )
(1)
ki ∈ (0, kmax ).
(2)
Additionally, the sum of ki should be equal to the total
number of passengers. Total evacuation time is needed
for creating a fitness function estimating the chromosomes in the genetic algorithm.
n
X
Ki = Lp .
(3)
i=1
The initial population is created by a number of chromosomes consisting of the following strings:
k1 = (k11 , k12 , k13 , · · · , k1i , · · · , k1n )
k2 = (k21 , k22 , k23 , · · · , k2i , · · · , k2n )
k3 = (k31 , k32 , k33 , · · · , k3i , · · · , k3n )
..
.
During the next step, the chromosomes to parent’s population are chosen by a roulette wheel style of selection.
Some chromosomes of this population are mutated with
previous fixed probability. Mutation changes all genes
in such chromosomes.
The method was tested on exampling passenger
ship for the calculation of evacuation time of 442 passengers (see Fig. 1).
Fig. 1 Evacuation routes arrangement
Detailed results of the computer simulations were
publicised[8,9] . The genetic algorithm was able to find
the worst evacuation time after a minimum 30 iterations. The worst evacuation time, obtained when one
staircase was blocked by fire during evacuation, was
about 1700 seconds, as shown in Fig. 2. The average
evacuation time was about 1000 seconds. The simulation was made for a typical passenger ship arrangement, where every vertical fire zone had two emergency
staircases.
(4)
kj = (kj1 , kj2 , kj3 , · · · , kji , · · · , kjn )
..
.
km = (km1 , km2 , km3 , · · · , kmi , · · · , kmn ).
Every chromosome fitness function should be estimated. The fitness functions for chromosome kj is as
follows
Tj
.
(5)
Fj = m
X
Tj
j=1
167
Fig. 2 Simulation results
168
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International Journal of Automation and Computing 2 (2006) 165-168
Conclusions
State-of-the-art analysis gives the following conclusions about the most dangerous reasons involving human evacuation and influence of evacuation routes designing for safety:
- marine accidents are often, because the elimination of all hazards for people health and life is still
impossible
- fire accident is one of the most dangerous and
quickest factors causing evacuation from the ship
- time of fire gases spreading influences the time
available for people evacuation
- in case of collision and losing stability, the time
for the ship sinking depends on many factors and can
be very short (few minutes)
- materials used for ship cabin and corridor ceiling
and furniture can be very dangerous for human health
in case the fire progresses
- evacuation routes arrangement should help the
passengers and crew members safely leave dangerous
areas
- appropriate connection of signage and lightening
give people the possibility for safety evacuation, and
- construction, furnishing and signage methods
should still be improved to increase safety level during cruises
References
[1] M. Watson. Disasters at Sea. Patrick Stephens Ltd., London, 1996.
[2] N. Hook. Maritime Casualties 1963-1996. Lloyd’s Press,
London, 1997.
[3] Large passenger ship safety, document FP 48 WP.7/ Rev 1,
International Maritime Organization (IMO), London, January 2004.
[4] International Convention for Safety of Life at Sea. Consolidated text of the 1974 SOLAS Convention, the 1978 SOLAS
Protocol, 1981 and 1983 SOLAS Amendments. International
Maritime Organization (IMO), London, 1986.
[5] T. Kukul a, R. Getka, O. Żyl kowski. Technical system of fire
and explosion prevention. Wydawnictwo Morskie, Gdańsk,
1981.
[6] G. Proulx, B. Kyle, J. Creak. Effectiveness of a Photoluminescent Wayguidance System. Fire Technology, vol, 36, no.
4, pp. 236–248, 2000.
[7] D. Withington. Life Saving Applications of Directional
Sound, Pedestrian and Evacuation Dynamics (PED). Berlin:
Springer – Verlag, 2002.
[8] D. Lozowicka. Problems Associated with Safe Personnel
Evacuation from the Ship in Emergency. In Proceedings of
the 3rd International Conference “Problems of Vessels and
Ports Facilities Operation EXPLO-SHIP 2004”, pp. 297–
306, 2004.
[9] D. Lozowicka. Influence of Different Parameters for Evacuation Time at Passenger Ship. In Proceedings of the 5th
Conference: Shipbuilding and Oceantechnology, Technical
University of Szczecin, Poland. 2004
Dorota H. Lozowicka was born in
Poland in 1973. She is a Lecturer
at Department of Vessel Construction and Operation at the Institute
of Marine Navigation, Szczecin Maritime University. Her research interest
is people evacuation modelling. She is
also interested in mathematics and artificial intelligence, specifically genetic
algorithm methods.