An Evacuation Simulation for Hazard Analysis of Isolation at Sea during Passenger Ship Heeling

The Crisis Management Manual is essential for safe and rapid evacuation in the event of an accident. However, the disaster response measures in the current ship evacuation manual are not systematic and are simple and impractical. In particular, the current instructions when the ship is heeling call for evacuation to the highest deck, in the opposite direction. This advice is dangerous, however, because it is isolated to a specific space, due to the walking limit angle according to the angle of heel during evacuation. This study focuses on the MV Sewol ferry accident on 16 April 2014, to evaluate the risk of isolation at sea when evacuating to the highest deck opposite in the direction of heeling when the ship was sinking. According to the initial angle of heel and various angular velocities, hazard maps were created for each safety factor to predict the risks for each situation, by performing a comprehensive evaluation of the safe and dangerous situations when evacuating to the highest deck. The problems and limitations of the current evacuation manuals and systems were identified, and the necessity of a new evacuation solution was presented.