ABSTRACT
The trend in building very large passenger ships imposes a necessity for the safety systems of those vessels to be constantly improved. Sea voyages offer an attractive way of spending free time, therefore ensuring safety of people on board should constitute an ultimate goal to be pursued, also in case of emergency evacuation from a vessel. An analysis of factors affecting the evacuation process should precede the actual stage of designing a vessel so that the risks can be, at least partially, eliminated during ship operation. For buildings ashore the actual time of evacuating counts till the moment the building is left. For ships, this process should be divided into the following stages: proceeding to muster stations, abandoning vessel (embarkation on life-saving appliances and their launching or the same combined with evacuation slide system). The time in case of possible emergency evacuation of people should not exceed the time available to carry out the evacuation.
