Effectiveness assessment and simulation of a wearable guiding device for ship evacuation

The evacuation of a modern passenger ship is a challenging task which might be hindered by a complex ship’s internal layout and/or the blocking of escape routes due to fire/flooding. In this work, the application of mobile technology to reduce travel time is investigated. A pilot system has been developed and tested on the RoPax ship GNV Bridge. It is composed of a server and a mobile application running on wearable smartbands. The guidance and localisation of devices have been carried out through Bluetooth beacons. A test area has been identified on GNV Bridge including 2 cabins corridors on deck 6 and the main lounge on deck 5. The corridors and the lounge are connected by three staircases, defining three alternative escape routes starting from cabins and arriving at the muster station in the main lounge. In the trials, the escape routes have been randomly blocked to assess the reduction of travel time achieved providing guidance through wearable devices to a sample population. It resulted in a 16.9% reduction in travel time. Besides, a strategy to simulate with a certified tool the effect of a guiding system has been defined. This is essential to make trials’ results transferable in different environments (e.g., other RoPax or cruise ships). In particular, experimental data coming from the trials have been used to assess agents’ speed reduction rate due to mobile device consultation. Although available experimental data were limited by the pandemic, the 2.5% agent’s speed reduction applicable to simulations has been assessed as most probable.