Analysis of Factors Affecting the Evacuation of People from Vessels in Life-Endangering Situations

The trends to build ever larger passenger vessels enforce the necessity of continuous improvement of safety systems on such ships. Sea voyages constitute nowadays an attractive form of spending one’s leisure, which is why people aboard vessels should also have their safety ensured in the case of a necessity to evacuate them. Paper presents the methods of lengthening of the time available for conducting evacuation, shortening the time of becoming aware of the necessity of evacuation and shortening the time of evacuation itself. An interesting concept of signalling the direction of evacuation by means of sound, bound strictly with the way man’s instrument of hearing functions and the way of locating the source of sound is also presented at the paper. A new approach to designing evacuation systems is discussed at the paper. The concept of a “safe haven” is presented.