Automation of Simplified Evacuation Analysis for Calculating Required Evacuation Time

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) mandates that evacuation analysis must be performed at the design stage to ensure the safety of passengers aboard ships. Therefore, ship designers are required to conduct this evacuation analysis during the ship design process. Evacuation analysis begins with creating an escape diagram that outlines the routes from each cabin to the designated assembly stations based on the designed plans. Subsequently, necessary parameters for escape analysis are measured and recorded, and the analysis is conducted using an Excel-based program. This process is manual and time-consuming. Additionally, due to the frequent design changes characteristic of passenger ships, this process must be repeated multiple times. Hence, this study proposes a method to automate this analysis process. The proposed method in this study starts with a preprocessing step to extract key components from 2D drawings. Following this, it distinguishes spaces such as cabins, corridors, and doors within the processed drawings. Using the identified spaces, it then searches for the shortest evacuation routes from each cabin to the assembly station. Based on the identified routes, the method automatically performs the simplified evacuation analysis as prescribed by IMO regulations. Applying the algorithm for automated escape analysis to Ro-Pax vessels demonstrated that the analysis time per ship, which previously took about 15 days, can be reduced to less than 10 minutes.