| dc.description.abstract | The complete evacuation of hospital facilities is always a difficult and complex
process. It has always been considered a last resort during any kind of threat. In recent
years, the increasing number of manmade and natural disasters has generated a
considerable interest in hospital evacuation issues, but very few studies have addressed
this problem.
The purpose of this study is to develop design strategies for hospital facilities to
support the complete evacuation process. The following three objectives are considered
for fulfilling the requirements of the study: (a) identify the disaster threats for hospital
buildings that drive the need for complete evacuation, (b) develop an understanding of
the consequences and complexities of hospital evacuation, and (c) form the design
strategies based on threat analysis, case-studies and experts’ reviews.
For interpretation purposes, this study use the qualitative research with casebased
reasoning approach to collect, summarize, and evaluate the recorded data. The
study is only focused on design considerations of some specific parameters for hospital building evacuation design. This study provides a comprehensive assessment of bestsuited
design strategies that could be adopted by healthcare architects or planners in
order to develop their designs in ways that improve the hospital building evacuation
process. | en |
