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any of today?s ships amount to oating cities , built to accommodate thousands of people, so it is of paramount importance to have contingency plans in place should an emergency occur onboard. Hard questions need to be asked during this planning process: If a re breaks out and some of the escape routes are blocked, would pas -sengers be able to reach their muster (assembly) stations? Would they be aected by smoke or gases? If the ship ran aground and listed, how fast would passengers be able to muster? Such questions are better answered by means of full-scale trials. However, for obvious reasons, this isn?t feasible. But these kinds of questions still need to be answered so that passengers and crew are prepared to deal with emergency situ -ations in the best possible way. Simulation is a good alternative to trials, and, in this case, simulation of pedestrian dynamics. is is dened as the motions and interaction of people with a given envi -ronment in which they evolve and with one another. www.sname.org/sname/mt July 2012 Simulation of pedestrian dynamics was initially used for urban planning and building evacuation. For the mar -itime environment, however, it is only since the introduction of the interim International Maritime Organization (IMO) guidelines in 2002 that computer- based evacuation simulation tools for passenger ships started to be used more consistently by the industry, mainly for rule compliance, but also for design and operational purposes. IMO guidelines for ev acuation analysis To perform an evacuation analysis in accordance with the IMO guidelines, the ship geometry, topology, and related semantics should be known before the start of such analysis and, in particular, the escape routes and the location of the assembly (muster) stations. In addition, the following assump -tions are made. e passengers and crew are represented as unique individuals with specied individual abilities and response times; passengers and crew Passengers assembled at a des ignated muster station.