Articles

Prioritization of Interventions and Technologies to Prevent Fire Spread in Hospitals

Abstract

Introduction: Fire is one of the potential dangers that threaten human activities more and more. Given that, this study will seek to introduce the factors preventing the spread of fire in hospitals to policymakers through prioritization based on applied mathematics modeling.

Methods: This study consisted of two stages. In the first stage, first through a comprehensive review of studies, factors preventing the spread of fire were identified, and then in the second stage, based on experts' opinions, the attributes affecting selection prioritization, their weights were determined and finally, based on the simple additive weighting (SAW) model the final prioritization was done for 5 types of hospital buildings.

Results: On the base of literature review and expert opinions, 7 factors and 4 attributes were identified. The most important factors were following as; "use of safety architecture and equipping appropriate emergency exit accesses according to the standard" in high-rise hospitals; "continuous training of firefighters" in wide hospitals; "use of fire extinguishing systems (automatic and manual)" in subsurface hospitals; "the use of fire extinguishing systems (automatic and manual)" in combined hospitals, and "continuous training of personnel firefighters" in portable hospitals.

Conclusion: Fire safety is not limited to the installation of a manual fire extinguisher, but for fire safety, especially in hospitals, all aspects should be considered, including the architectural form of the building, how the materials and equipment in the building caught fire, fire behavior in terms of heat transfer methods, the amount of firefighting training of the personnel, recognition and application of modern and ready-made equipment for smoke ventilation systems and fire products, automatic and manual fire alarm and extinguishing systems to prevent the spread of fire.

Keywords: Hospital, Inhibitors, Fire, Safety

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IssueVol 5, No 2 (2021) QRcode
SectionArticles
DOI https://doi.org/10.18502/htaa.v5i2.8006
Keywords
Hospital Inhibitors Fire Safety
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How to Cite
1.
Mirakbari SM, Ooshaksaraie M, Daneshmand-Mehr M, Amoozad Khalili H, Majidi SA. Prioritization of Interventions and Technologies to Prevent Fire Spread in Hospitals. Health Tech Ass Act. 2021;5(2).