A Fundamental Study on Evacuation Assessments of Regional Medical Facilities in Taiwan

Many hospital patients are immobile. Therefore, evacuation assessment regulations for hospital buildings should be more demanding than for other buildings. The Taiwan Building Code has established some limitations on population density of some divisions in medical facilities. However, evacuation assessment is still difficult due to the lack of information about the speeds with which different people can move or be moved. People’ speeds and population density has been investigated in this study. The results show average speeds for four types of people are 1.28 m/sec for people with no restricted movement, 0.55 m/sec for those moving with restriction, 0.82 m/sec for those requiring the most assistance, and 0 m/sec for those can’t leaving from hospital. Population densities in administration and policlinic zones are lower than the standard in the Taiwan Building Code and in neonatology rooms, they are higher.