• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Navigation and Port Research Conference
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• 2017.11a
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• pp.79-85
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• 2017

It is critical that passengers should be given timely and correct escape or evacuation guidance from captain and crews when there are hazardous situations in a ship. Otherwise the consequences could be disastrous as "SEWOL Ferry" the South Korean passenger ship which sank in southern coastal area on 16th April 2014. Due to the captain's delayed evacuation decision and lack of sufficient number of crews to guide passengers' evacuation, the accident recorded many casualties, most of whom were high school students (302 passengers sank down with the ship while 172 rescued). Building a passenger ship with well-designed physical escape routes is one thing and guiding passengers to those escape routes in real disaster situation is another. Passengers get panic and move to a wrong direction, bottleneck makes situation worse, and even crews get panic also - passive static escape route signage and small number of trained crews might not be enough to take care of them. SESS (Smart Escape Support System) is being developed sponsored by South Korea Ministry of Ocean and Fisheries starting from 2016 with 4 years of roadmap. SESS comprises multiple active dynamic signage devices which communicate with real-time escape routing server software via LoRa (Long Range) proprietary wireless network.