## 2 Methodology
The process consisted of three screening phases to guarantee the inclusion of relevant material that discusses evacuation methods and safety protocols in cruise/large passenger vessels and also the exclusion of papers considered as irrelevant or not useful to the current exploratory study. Furthermore, this process was used as a tool to asses and eliminate potential bias that could interfere with the research scope. During the first screening stage, the titles, abstracts, conclusions, and keywords (of those 310) papers that were identified by the authors, were carefully examined based on the predetermined criteria for inclusion and exclusion. This screening stage addressed key elements that are crucial to the effectiveness of evacuations, crowd control, breakdowns in communication, inefficiencies in operations, and the impact of human error in emergency situations. During that phase, 124 of the papers were found irrelevant and consequently excluded, resulting in 186 articles that were considered appropriate for further study. During the second screening phase, studies published before the year 2010 were excluded, except for 2 articles that were written before this cutoff year and were referring to certain ideas that are unchangeable through time. This criterion aimed to ensure that only recent research, reflecting current standards, methodologies, and technologies in evacuation procedures and safety protocols, was considered. The emphasis was on contemporary studies to ensure relevance to modern practices and advancements in the targeted field. Throughout the filtration process, a total of 22 items were eliminated, since they fell outside this fifteen-year window, thus lacking relevance to current knowledge, practices, and advancements in evacuation procedures and safety protocols. Moreover, during the third filtering, a detailed review of the 164 remaining articles was conducted. The criteria for this stage were to eliminate the literature that did not have relevance to the research scope, or were challenging to comprehend/irrelevant to ship design, and could not be applied to evacuation procedures or safety protocols of cruise/large passenger vessels. This step resulted in the exclusion of 136 articles, refining the selection to 28 articles deemed highly relevant. These 28 articles were then subjected to in-depth analysis and synthesis. Finally, after carefully reading these articles and examining their references, certain other academic papers were identified with the snowballing method as relevant to the current effort, therefore making the total number of (relevant) articles to be 47 (Figure 1). That difference between final and snowball articles lies in their selection methods and roles. Final articles are rigorously selected through systematic database searches using predefined keywords, inclusion/exclusion criteria, and screening protocols, ensuring they directly align with the research scope and can satisfy stringent standards that are set for relevance and quality. On the other hand, snowball articles are identified through the references and citations of the final articles, capturing related works that were missed in database searches. Generally, while final articles provide the core evidence base, snowball articles broaden the review scope by adding contextual, foundational, and interdisciplinary insights, enhancing the study's depth and comprehensiveness. Figure 1: Flowchart depicting the screening stages in the present study.