Objectives  Evacuation analysis is essential for the design and safety assessment of cruise ships. In this study, a fine-grid-based evacuation model is developed to accurately simulate personnel behaviors and evacuation rules during the cruise ship evacuation process.

  Methods  First, some key algorithms of the model are given: the deck spaces are defined as two kinds of areas, the target area and the functional area, divided into 0.1 m × 0.1 m grids to accurately describe the internal spatial layout and arrangement. Next, personnel movement rules are developed by introducing the parameters of the expected movement direction and movement tendency of passengers, and two rules of path planning are established, namely, the free option of the shortest path and the specified shortest path. Finally, a cruise evacuation case is simulated and the results are compared with datasets from a semi-unannounced trial of the EU Safeguard Project.

  Results  The results show that the evacuation model developed herein meets the requirements of the four validation metrics ERD, EPC, SC, TAT%. The times of the overall assembly process and each assembly station are well compliant with the experimental data, and the relative error of the overall assembly time is about 4.9%. Compared with the simulation results of commercial software EXODUS, the calculation results of the model developed herein are more in line with the experimental data.

  Conclusions  The proposed fine-grid model for cruise evacuation simulation can improve the design of escape routes and optimization of evacuation plans.