Assessing systems for offshore emergency evacuation

Emergency evacuation is a rare event in the offshore oil industry. Nonetheless, emergency procedures must be practiced routinely for the benefit of the work force and the emergency services. These practices typically take place in good weather conditions where there is little threat to those involved. However, in reality an emergency could occur in adverse weather conditions which can affect the capabilities of vessels and helicopters. This paper describes a study in which the data from various sources are synthesised in order to estimate the effectiveness of emergency evacuation and rescue systems in a stochastic environment. The study employed a discrete event simulation incorporating a model of the evacuation and rescue operations interfaced with a file of weather data. This approach provided a measure, the probability of completing the evacuation within N hours, for the comparison of alternative systems.