What is the best way to track personnel during an evacuation at a site with hazardous areas?

The best way to track personnel during a site or plant evacuation is to move beyond isolated manual headcounts and adopt a connected personnel visibility strategy.

That usually means combining personnel-on-site, personnel-on-board, or zone-level data with mustering workflows, RTLS (Real Time Location System), certified worker location tags, operational software and clear processes. The objective is to maintain visibility as personnel move across different parts of the site; including hazardous zones, non-hazardous areas, evacuation routes, and designated safe muster zones.

In this article, we are considering evacuations from sites, modules or specific process areas within sites where hazardous areas may be present. Personnel may need to move from hazardous areas through other operational areas before reaching a designated safe muster zone. The visibility challenge therefore extends across the wider evacuation and mustering process, not only within the hazardous area itself.

While evacuation planning remains the responsibility of the site operator and their safety specialists, Extronics (BARTEC’s Connectivity and IoT brand) supports these processes with RTLS technology that can extend personnel visibility across hazardous and non-hazardous parts of the site. Our ATEX, IECEx, and cMETus certified solutions enable location technology to be deployed in the most demanding hazardous areas, helping organizations maintain a connected view of personnel as they move towards safe muster zones. This can help improve personnel visibility, mustering, and last-known location awareness as part of a wider emergency response process. Being a real time location tracking solution we can also quickly identify people that are not moving toward muster zones and notify Supervisors or the Safety team to intervene.

From manual accountability to connected visibility

For many hazardous area operators, personnel accountability has traditionally relied on paper lists, badge checks, radio calls, warden reports, T-Cards and supervisor headcounts.

These processes still matter. But as industrial operations become more digital, there is an opportunity to make personnel visibility faster, clearer, and more resilient across the complete mustering and evacuation journey; from operational and hazardous areas through to safe muster locations.

Different environments present different challenges, but the visibility need is similar: emergency teams need to understand who is present, where personnel are, whether they are moving into a safe area or muster zone, and who still needs to be accounted for. For example:

• Refineries: Workers spread across multiple process units, work areas, and loading zones.
• Chemical plants: Workers handling hazardous substances in production, storage, and transfer areas.
• Tank farms: Remote workers and single person activity around large outdoor areas with tanks, containment areas, and transfer equipment.
• Fuel terminals: Drivers and operators moving around loading and storage areas.
• Pharmaceutical facilities: Workers within controlled areas using flammable solvents, powders, or process materials.
• Warehouses: Operators moving and storing flammable goods, aerosols, chemicals, or batteries.
• Loading areas: People and vehicles operating near hazardous material transfers.
• Offshore platforms: Personnel spread across decks, modules, and muster stations.

The question is no longer simply: “How do we count people at a muster point?”

A better question is: “How can we create a live operational picture of who is present, where people are, whether they have reached a safe area, and who still needs attention?”

An evacuation may start in a hazardous process area and finish at a muster point in a safe area. RTLS therefore needs to support visibility across those different environments rather than treating the hazardous area as an isolated part of the workflow.

That shift is where RTLS visibility can support more connected evacuation and mustering operations across sites that contain hazardous areas.

Build a reliable digital view of who is present

Personnel visibility starts with knowing who is present and where they are. Onshore, this may mean understanding who is on site, which area they are working in, and whether they are employees, contractors, or visitors. Offshore, it is similar and termed personnel on board, or POB.

Digitalization is changing both approaches. Onshore sites increasingly rely on connected, visitor management, contractor check-in, permit-to-work systems, and location data. Offshore operations have evolved from traditional T-Card POB processes toward e-POB systems, where personnel data is managed electronically and can interface and interact with other operational systems.

For more on the offshore side of this shift, our article on modern POB systems explains how digital POB systems can improve visibility, reduce manual admin, and support emergency accountability.

The same principle applies onshore: when personnel data connects with location, mustering, and operational visibility systems, it becomes part of a live operational picture that can span hazardous areas, general operational areas, and safe muster zones.

Turn mustering into a data-led workflow

Muster points remain central to evacuation procedures, whether the site is onshore or offshore. But digitalization changes how quickly teams across the site, vessel or platform can understand who has reached safety.

Electronic or automatic mustering can help update a worker’s status when they are detected at a muster point or defined safe zone. Combined with RTLS, this can provide continuity between where personnel were working before the evacuation and where they are subsequently located. Instead of waiting for manual reports to be collected and reconciled, incident teams can focus on the exception list: the people still unaccounted for.

This is particularly valuable on sites containing hazardous areas because personnel visibility does not end when someone leaves a classified zone. The same wider RTLS architecture supports the journey into non-hazardous areas and ultimately to the muster location.

For offshore environments, electronic mustering helps drive and support emergency accountability processes, although requirements vary by asset type, flag state, local regulation, and operational context. We explore this in our article on electronic mustering offshore and SOLAS expectations.

Design RTLS around the environment and use case

Digital transformation projects can fail when technology is selected before the operational problem is properly defined.

Hazardous area sites are complex. An RTLS deployment will need to operate across both classified and non-classified spaces, each of which can create different requirements for location accuracy, connectivity, infrastructure, certification, and user behavior. Some applications need broad zone-level visibility, while others need more precise information around rooms, process areas, equipment, routes, or muster points.

That is why RTLS design should be matched to the environment, infrastructure, and use case, rather than treated as a one-size-fits-all technology decision.

We explain this in Designing Practical RTLS for Hazardous Areas, and explore why accuracy should be matched to the use case in Dispelling the RTLS Myth: Accuracy vs Use Case.

In systems where BLE (Bluetooth Low Energy) is used to provide additional location accuracy, beacon positioning can also affect how clearly a system understands rooms, zones, muster points, and movement areas, which we cover in our guide to positioning XB Beacons for RTLS accuracy.

Move from data collection to decision support

Collecting location data is not enough. The value comes from turning that data into a usable operational view.

During an evacuation or drill, teams need to see:

• Who is present
• Who has mustered
• Who remains unaccounted for
• Where the un-mustered people are
• Time location update time
• Whether the un-mustered personal are in a hazardous area, safe area, or muster zone
• Supervisor, worker or contractor status
• Other relevant worker safety or operational alerts.

That is why the worker tag, Extronics Location Engine, and the visibility platform, MobileView and third-party software such as ACS system and PAGA all need to work together. Together, these technologies can support personnel visibility across the evacuation workflow, including hazardous, non-hazardous areas and the muster zones beyond them. During an evacuation, the aim is not simply to collect location data, but to present it in a way that helps incident teams quickly understand who is safe, who is unaccounted for, and where to focus attention next. For more on our hazardous area worker tags, read the philosophy behind the iTAG X-Range.

 Ready to improve evacuation visibility across your hazardous area site?

Extronics offers specialist RTLS support for hazardous areas, including certified worker location tags, location technology software, and visibility platforms for environments where potentially explosive atmospheres may be present. Contact us for expert support.

About the Author

JM

Jon Miles

Regional Team Leader - APAC

Jon leads business development across Asia Pacific, expanding our presence in explosion-proof engineering and RTLS technologies. With deep experience deploying wireless and tracking solutions across high-risk industries, He works globally to deploy WIRELESS, RTLS/POB, and AUTOID systems.

Last updated on September 24, 2026

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