The design of the arrangement of evacuation routes on a passenger ship using the method of genetic algorithms.

Dorota Łozowicka,Seyedali Mirjalili

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0255993

Abstract

The article concerns the problem of evacuation from passenger ships. It is important because it has not yet been possible to eliminate all the hazards associated with sea travel. In this paper, a concept of a method allowing to determine the arrangement of evacuation routes, for which evacuation time would be minimal, was presented. The genetic algorithm method was used in the calculations, and an original method of coding the considered problem was proposed. Sample calculations were performed to verify the correctness of the proposed algorithm. The results of applying the developed method to calculate the evacuation time on a real passenger ship are presented.

Highlights

The development of the shipbuilding industry in the sector related to the construction of modern passenger ships is characterized in recent years by the trend to build larger and larger vessels, taking on board up to five thousand people
The time it takes for passengers to get from their evacuation areas to their assembly stations is highly dependent on human factors
Due to the impossibility of influencing the randomness of the population among passengers, evacuation routes should primarily be designed in such a way that the evacuation time is as short as possible

Summary

Introduction

The development of the shipbuilding industry in the sector related to the construction of modern passenger ships is characterized in recent years by the trend to build larger and larger vessels, taking on board up to five thousand people. At the ship design stage and during the development of evacuation procedures, the question arises, how should the evacuation routes on the ship be designed to reduce the evacuation time as much as possible? It is necessary to improve the "survivability" of the ship, but it is important to develop evacuation systems in terms of rescue operations as well as the design of evacuation routes on the ship. The time it takes for passengers to get from their evacuation areas to their assembly stations is highly dependent on human factors. Due to the impossibility of influencing the randomness of the population among passengers (e.g. the presence of intoxicated people, invalids, etc.), evacuation routes should primarily be designed in such a way that the evacuation time is as short as possible

Objectives

Methods

Results