Arctic Escape, Evacuation, and Rescue – Past, Present, and Future

Escape, evacuation, and rescue plans, systems, and procedures form an integral part of the emergency response capability of any manned installation or vessel. Whether operating in open or ice covered waters, a reliable set of processes for abandoning the installation and moving, possibly following an interim relatively safe residence (e.g., in a safety craft), to a safe haven such as an icebreaker, port, or other vessel or installation, is necessary to provide adequate safety for personnel and in many cases also to satisfy regulations. Although there is no distinction in the level of safety that should be afforded in open or ice covered waters, the development of EER for the latter has fallen far behind in technology, regulation, and analysis even though active operations in ice have been ongoing now for many decades. In this paper, a review of past, current, and developing technologies, analyses, and regulations and standards is given. Past practices dating back to the early days in the Beaufort Sea are quite primitive and fortunately were never tested in a major catastrophe. Considerable attention is being given to use of current developments, including dedicated Arctic systems such as ARKTOS, semi-dedicated systems such as Seascape, and numerous conceptual designs. Supporting multi-disciplinary research including full scale tests, model tests, and computer simulation supports this new technology development. In addition, current standards have been developed by Transport Canada for EER in ice, and ISO WG8 is working on a more general standard for the same purpose. The future is promising: ice resistant lifeboats or TEMPSC’s (IRT), various launching devices to deposit crafts safely in or on the ice, and novel methods of evacuation and rescue, discussed in the paper, are under consideration. Following a review of past, current, and future developments in technological, analytical and research and regulatory areas, the paper identifies the major outstanding problems and makes recommendations for the most promising solutions.