Evacuation Data from a Hospital Outpatient Drill The Case Study of North Shore Hospital

Abstract

Assessing the fire safety of buildings is fundamental to reduce the impact of this threat on their occupants. Such an assessment can be done by combining existing models and existing knowledge on how occupants behave during fires. Although many studies have been carried out for several types of built environment, only few of those investigate healthcare facilities and hospitals. In this study, we present a new behavioural data-set for hospital evacuations. The data was collected from the North Shore Hospital in Auckland (NZ) during an unannounced drill carried out in May 2017. This drill was recorded using CCTV and those videos are analysed to generate new evacuation model inputs for hospital scenarios. We collected pre-movement times, exit choices and total evacuation times for each evacuee. Moreover, we estimated pre-movement time distributions for both staff members and patients. Finally, we qualitatively investigated the evacuee actions of patients and staff members to study their interaction during the drill. The results show that participants were often independent from staff actions with a majority able to make their own decision.