Developing an Evacuation Evaluation Model for Offshore Oil and Gas Platforms Using BIM and Agent-based Model

Accidents on offshore oil and gas platforms (OOGPs) usually cause serious fatalities and financial losses considering demanding environment platforms locate and complex topsides structure platforms own. Evacuation planning on platforms is usually challenging. The computational tool is a good choice to plan evacuation by emergency simulation. However, the complex structure of platforms and varied evacuation behaviors usually weaken the advantages of computational simulation. Therefore, this study developed a simulation model for OOGPs to evaluate different evacuation plans to improve evacuation performance by integrating building information modeling (BIM) and agent-based model (ABM). The developed model consists of four parts: evacuation model input, simulation environment modeling, agent definition, and simulation and comparison. Necessary platform information is extracted from BIM and then used to model simulation environment by integrating matrix model and network model. During agent definition, in addition to basic characteristics, environment sensing and dynamic escape path planning functions are also developed to improve simulation performance. An example OOGP BIM topsides with different emergent scenarios is used to illustrate the developed model. The results showed that the developed model can well simulate evacuation on OOGPs and improve evacuation performance. The developed model was also suggested to be applied to other industries such as the architecture, engineering, and construction industry.