Evaluating building wayfinding performance in healthcare environment: a novel hybrid decision-making model

Abstract

The goal of this study is maintained as the process of establishing and validating an evidence-based approach for assessing the quality of hospital’s wayfinding from an environmental standpoint and creating an evaluation tool for the building’s wayfinding performance (WP). To do this, the integrated Multiple-criteria decision-making (MCDM) technique was utilized to examine the independent linkages between users’ movement dynamics based on Factor Analysis and the D-ANP (Decision-making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) based Analytical Network Process (ANP)) method. In this regard, experts gave each model’s variable a weight and a significant value. Thus, findings show that experts classified sixteen indicators into three dimensions in the proposed model: physical data (with 50% influence on building wayfinding (BW)), environmental representation data (with 33% influence on BW), and symbolic data of the environment (17% influence on BW). In validating the scheme, the findings met the case criteria, demonstrating tool’s practical feasibility.