Analysis of Naval Ship Evacuation Using Stochastic Simulation Models and Experimental Data Sets

The study of emergency evacuation in public spaces, buildings and large ships may present parallel characteristic in terms of complexity of the layout but there are also significant differences that can hindering passengers to reach muster stations or the lifeboats. There are many hazards on a ship that can cause an emergency evacuation, the most severe result in loss of lives. Providing safe and effective evacuation of passengers from ships in an emergency situation becomes critical. Recently, computer simulation has become an indispensable technology in various fields, among them, the evacuation models that recently evolved incorporating human behavioral factors. In this work, an analysis of evacuation in a Landing Helicopter Dock (LHD) ship was conducted. Escape routes specified by the ship’s procedures were introduced in the model and the six emergency scenarios of the Naval Ship Code were simulated. The crew and embarked troops were introduced with their different evacuation behavior, in addition, walking speeds were extracted from data set collected in experiments conducted at other warships. From the results of the simulations, the longest time was chosen and confidence intervals constructed to determine the total evacuation time. Finally, results show that evacuation time meets regulatory requirements and the usefulness and low cost of the evacuation simulation for testing and refining possible ships’ layouts and emergency scenarios.