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.