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Executive Summary 
 

State-of-the-art (SoTA) analysis is a preliminary step to specify the baseline with respect to demonstrate the novelty of the upcoming research results. Funded under the European Union’s Horizon2020 Framework Programme, the aim of SafePASS is to radically redefine the evacuation processes, evacuation systems/equipment and international regulations for passenger ships in all environments, hazards and weather conditions, independently of the demographic factor, by developing an integrated system that will collectively monitor, process and inform during emergencies both crew and passengers of the optimal evacuation routes, coupled with advanced, intuitive and easy to use LSA, resulting as such to a significant reduction of the total time required for ship evacuation and increased safety.

 

The current document provides a review of the existing tools and products used for evacuation, as well as an identification of regulatory gaps and accident investigation. It is connected to Task 2.1: Ship evacuation current practices and regulation-gaps and needs within Work Package WP2: SafePASS Design, User and System requirements. The present document is considered as a guiding and referenced document for the whole project. The concluding remarks presented within this study have been discussed and evaluated during the SafePASS stakeholders’ workshop, conducted on 29th of January 2020, in Glasgow, Scotland.

 

The identification of the evacuation processes in the context of the best practises, tools and gaps is crafted by conducting a State-of-the-Art analysis of the evacuation of the large passenger ships, using a five-step approach.

 

The five discrete concurrent steps are referring to:

i. the recording of the evacuation regulatory framework,

ii. the documentation of the recent publications in the field of evacuation of the large passenger ships,

iii. the identification of existing systems used during the evacuation,

iv. the reporting of the recent evacuation incidents, and

v. the review of previous project results and outcomes.