Firefighting Capacity Assessment in Armed Forces Hospitals

Abstract

As the general public begin to attach greater importance to the firefighting capacities of large public infrastructures, it is high time for an overhaul of the medical, leisure and teaching infrastructures and so on concerning their firefighting capacities. In response to the especially drastic increase in the demands for medical resources, armed forces hospitals are being opened to the public for medical and teaching purposes. In order to meet the daily needs and maintain their operations in a sustainable manner, these hospitals have gone through many spatial and furnishing alterations, hence the changes in their original constructional and fire protection design. These changes, however, might lead to an increase in the risk factors. With Taoyuan Armed Forced General Hospital, which is fairly large in size, as the fireground for the simulation, and the previous cases of fire in the hospital as the basis for the numerical simulation analysis, this study is set out mainly to investigate and validate the impacts of the firefighting facilities (which are consistent with the fire codes and regulations) on the efforts of the people inside the hospital to escape from a fire under such a variety of circumstances as when the space is closed, open, or as the fire sources change in nature and position. Compartmentalization and precautions are used in the process to minimize fire losses. The main objective of this study is to develop some fire safety education materials for such public places as government organizations and schools.