Using Virtual Reality techniques to improve the efficiency of such systems has been recognized to
be of great help by Beroggi et al. (1995). Since then, and largely due to the extraordinary evolution of
Graphics Processors, mainly in the last twenty years, simulation and decision support systems in the
maritime industry have gradually adopted 3D visualization and interaction (Varela et al., 2011). The
majority of these systems focus three main emergency situations: passenger evacuation, fire and
flooding propagation. It is the case of the maritmeEXODUS and the SMARTFIRE systems described
in Galea et al. (2003) for simulating passenger evacuation under fire conditions. More recently, the
VELOS system described in Ginnis et al. (2010), is also based on a VR platform to analyze the urgent
evacuation of passengers. Tate et al. (1997) demonstrated that using Virtual Environments for training
and mission rehearsal improves the efficiency of firefighters in fighting real on -board fires.
Concerning the ship flooding simulation, Varela and Guedes Soares (2007) describe a VR based
Decision Support System to assist the coordination of damage control teams and to take the
appropriate counter-measures in case of flooding fire or contamination onboard military vessels