Evacuation Safety Assessment on an Offshore Platform Under Fire Condition

Evacuation safety assessment plays a vital role in safeguarding the lives on offshore platforms. In order to better assess the evacuation safety in the event of a fire accident on offshore platforms, a safety assessment approach is proposed by considering the movement model, the fire avoidance model and the coupled injury model. The diffusion process of fire products is simulated firstly based on the fire dynamics simulator (FDS) software, and the proposed assessment approach is applied to compare the evacuation safety of personnel under different fire avoidance models. Then, a case of the evacuation on an offshore platform is presented, while the evacuation safety of workers on the working deck is assessed. The results show that the evacuation route with the shortest distance does not mean the safest. Since workers are susceptible to psychological or other factors, their evacuation behavior has many uncertainties. Therefore, it is advised to improve the spatial awareness of workers to cope with emergencies through evacuation drills. Additionally, public announcement (PA) or personnel guidance can also be used to quickly evacuate from the hazardous areas through appropriate exits or evacuation routes.