Simulation and Optimization for the Staircase Evacuation of a Cruise Ship Based on a Multigrid Model

A cruise ship is a large public place, and it is very important to ensure the safety of passengers during the evacuation process in case of an emergency. This paper proposes a method to improve evacuation efficiency on cruise ships by controlling passengers’ density. According to the construction of the staircase, the space of the staircase is divided into the step and landing areas. On the basis of considering the influence of passengers’ view field and moving characteristics of passengers, the moving rules of passengers in two areas are established. Taking staircases of the cruise ship as the evacuation scenario, the evacuation process is simulated by using the established model. From simulation results, it is found that numbers of evacuated passengers between staircases are very unbalanced and too many passengers gather in one staircase, which lead to serious congestion. By controlling passengers’ density in stairs areas, the minimum evacuation time is the optimization objective and the optimization model is established by using the quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithm and genetic algorithm. The optimization results show that the evacuation time is significantly shortened when the passenger’s density on the staircase is kept within an appropriate range, which proves that the evacuation efficiency can be effectively improved by controlling the passengers’ density.