The current trend for the new cruise ships is toward giant constructions, consequently the complexity of the vessel increases (through the mix of passenger types, accommodation types, number of decks and number of stairways) and a huge number of passengers and crew are carried.

The recent Rules ("Safe Return to Port") entered in force concerning safety matters are mainly addressed in order to increase the intrinsic survival capability of the ship in event of fire or flooding below a certain threshold. When the casualty threshold is exceeded an orderly evacuation and abandonment of the ship shall be guaranteed. Lessons learnt by the grounding, in 2012, of the "Costa Concordia" have shown that only a proper planning of the evacuation mechanism is the basic premise to ensure a safe abandonment of the ship.

Nowadays, the international normative impose to carry out evacuation analysis only for ro-ro passenger ships. The IMO Maritime Safety Committee (MSC), 93^rd session, instead, has decided to develop amendments to SOLAS and the FSS Code to make evacuation analysis mandatory for new passenger ships, starting from February 2016.

The paper deals with the application of innovative tools for the advanced evacuation analysis of an existing passenger ship taking into account the different human factors affecting the movement of a crowd in great agitation. The aim of the study is to evaluate a safety index able to express the capability of both evacuation and abandonment of the ship. In the future, such a mandatory analysis shall be performed since the early stages of design, and clearly it will play a very important role for the development of the general arrangements of a new construction.