Evacuation performance of participants in an offshore platform under smoke situations.

The study of evacuation on offshore platforms under fire is significant but has received little attention by previous researchers. The evacuation process from offshore platforms under three distinct visibilities (>10 m, 1 m–10 m, <1 m) is investigated by a group of experiments and questionnaires with 120 participants. The group evacuation activities of the participants regarding the evacuation time, movement speed, typical behavior and route choice were recorded and studied by 48 cameras and wristbands with Bluetooth positioning function. We ignited smoke bombs often used in the fire drill to generate the smoke, which had a little irritating smell but is safe for people. We investigated the speed in running mode and walking fast mode, and the speed of participants with walking fast without smoke we obtained fits well with the data that IMO recommend. In addition, we found the speed of participants does not always decrease in the smoke environment, sometimes it increases when people are well aware of the surroundings. Finally, we study the relationship between personnel characteristics and evacuation behavior with the help of hypothesis testing. The study will be helpful to the guidelines of IMO to be revised in the future and develop efficient evacuation strategy to guide the evacuation under fire in offshore platforms. • A full-scale evacuation experiment was carried out in a real platform in winter in China. • Smoke evacuation performance of the platform with three different visibilities was assessed by experiments and questionnaires. • The relationship between personnel characteristics and evacuation behavior is studied with quantitative analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]