The current status and future issues in human evacuation from ships

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) developed guidelines in May 1999 for the evacuation analysis of Ro-Ro passenger ships to prevent loss of life in maritime accidents. However, IMO considered these guidelines only as an interim measure and allocated 3 years for their improvement and further development as very limited experience and data were available. In this paper, the requirements of the IMO and current research regarding ship evacuation are reviewed. In addition, applicable evacuation models are presented as well as several experimental methods of obtaining the data of human behavior in regard to listing and the dynamic effect of waves on a ship are evaluated. Recommendations on further issues are discussed at the end. (C) 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.