| Summary: | In order to develop realistic and robust maritime evacuation procedures, it is vital to understand how passengers behave in emergency situations. An essential component of this understanding is the collection and characterization of human performance data. However, little data relating to passenger response time or fullscale validation data in maritime environments exists. Although the International Maritime Organization’s (IMO) evacuation protocol Maritime Safety Committee (MSC) Circ. 1033 and its successor, MSC Circ. 1238, are of great use, it is known in the industry that the existing data is not representative of passenger ships in general. The SAFEGUARD project addresses the IMO Fire Protection Sub Committee’s requirement to collect full-scale data for calibration and validation of ship-based evacuation models, as well as proposing and investigating additional benchmark scenarios to be used in certification analysis. Funded through the European Commission’s 7th Framework Programme, the Newfoundland and Labrador Research and Development Corporation and Transport Canada (Marine Safety), SAFEGUARD has brought together leading industry experts and the project findings will play an integral role in framing the next iteration of international guidelines for ship evacuation analysis. This essay describes the methodology undertaken within the full-scale assembly trials that were carried out – one of which included the largest ever real-life assembly trial on a passenger ship. The main findings are presented and highlight what this will mean for the future of ship evacuation.
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