Hospital Evacuation Planning Tool for Assistance Devices (HEPTAD)

Abstract

SummaryA new software tool, called HEPTAD (Hospital Evacuation Planning Tool for Assistance Devices), designed to aid evacuation planning in hospitals is described and demonstrated in this article. The software can identify regions within a hospital geometry that are inappropriate for patients who require the use of specific movement assistance devices in the event of an emergency evacuation. Using the software, Hospital Emergency Coordinators can reduce the risk of allocating a bed to a patient from which they cannot be evacuated within a safe time. In addition, HEPTAD is designed to be a proof of concept for algorithms that will later be incorporated within the EXODUS egress model. HEPTAD utilises several techniques from autonomous robotics to generate the fastest viable egress route for movement assistance devices from every location in the geometry while considering device spatial constraints (size and shape) and kinematic constraints (maximum speeds, turning radius and holonomicity). It then uses the egress time of this route along with factors from space syntax (isovist and spaciousness) to analyse the emergency vulnerability of every location within the geometry.