Mustering and evacuation of passengers : scientific basis for design

The capsizing of the HERALD in 1987 (death toll 193) and the ESTONIA in 1994 (death toll 852) have shown that safety can be tenibly insufficient. That is why, since these disasters, moves to improve safety on board ship have gathered momentum. And this had led to the authorities paying special attention to the provisions for evacuating passengers in case ofan emergency. This also explains much of the thinking behind the project "Mustering and Evacuation of Passengers: Scientific Basis for Design". A seven-strong consortium led by TNO in Soesterberg (NL) has been set up to tackle the MEPdesign project. The consortium is looking into ways of radically improving safety at sea by making sure o that passengers know where to go when disaster strikes, o that life-saving equipment works as intended, o that computer models for the assessment of ship-evacuation safety are based on sound (behavioural) data. The project runs from 1999 to 2002. Results thus far show that current IMO guidelines for sigrrposting escape routes are not good enough, and that up to 30% of the passengers will waste time due to make way-finding enors. Other results show that lifeboats are safe in calm wheather only, and may collide forcefully with the hull while being lowered from the mothership. Improvements are under design; some have been tested and found effective