Disabilities in Evacuation for Cruise Ships - Leisure Lab Methodology to Support an Algorithm-driven Evacuation Prediction Model

Although passengers on a cruise ship are a very heterogeneous group, improvements concerning evacuation procedures that consider people with a disability have been largely neglected in previous research. The PALAEMON project aims to help close this gap by developing a Decision Support System that improves and speeds up the evacuation process including people with disabilities. Therefore an explorative pilot study was conducted to measure the gait speed using a hemiparesis simulator. For the implementation of the pilot study - which we coined Leisure Lab - urban areas usually used for recreational activities were instrumentalized. A parkour with a total of 16 stations was set-up in a fun house in an amusement park in Vienna. Nine participants (4 male and 5 female participants) took part in the explorative study, completing two runs (one with and one without the hemiparesis simulator). The results showed a difference between the two runs of the participants. A loss of gait speed of up to 112% was measured. The results of the Leisure Lab study will be taken into account when developing the Decision Support System as well as for the development of further algorithms to decrease the time it takes for a full evacuation of a cruise ship.