An immersive virtual reality experiment on passenger evacuation behavior under reduced visibility and evacuation guidance in ship fires

Ship fires pose substantial challenges to passenger evacuation because smoke can severely reduce visibility. In this paper, immersive virtual reality experiments were conducted to examine passenger evacuation behavior under ship fires. Forty participants each completed eight scenarios combining four visibility levels (30 m, 3.5 m, 2.0 m, and 0.5 m) with and without static crew guidance. Evacuation time, distance, route detour ratio, and assembly station choice were analyzed by Friedman test, Wilcoxon signed-rank test and mixed-effects models. The results indicated that visibility and crew guidance significantly affected evacuation time, distance, and route detour ratio. Evacuation time, distance and route detour ratio became worse as visibility decreased, while differences between 3.5 m and 2.0 m were small. Crew guidance reduced evacuation time, distance, and route detour ratio, and its effect on evacuation time is significantly stronger at 0.5 m. Moreover, evacuation time was positively correlated with route detour ratio in most experimental conditions. Participants tended to select a nearer assembly station. Furthermore, gender significantly affected evacuation time and assembly station choice. After accounting for visibility and guidance, females had an estimated evacuation time 16.02 s longer than males, and 2.932 times the odds of selecting the nearer assembly station.