Prioritization of Interventions and Technologies to Prevent Fire Spread in Hospitals

Abstract

Background: Fire is one of the potential dangers that threatens human activities more and more. Given that, this study sought to introduce the factors preventing the spread of fire in hospitals to policymakers through prioritization based on the techniques of applied mathematics (multi-attribute decision-making technique).
 Methods: This study consisted of two stages. In the first stage, through a comprehensive review of studies, factors preventing the spread of fire were identified, and then in the second stage, based on the experts’ opinions, the attributes affecting the prioritization and their weights were determined. Finally, based on the Simple Additive Weighting (SAW) model, the final prioritization was done for five types of hospital buildings.
 Results: Based on the literature review and experts’ opinions, seven factors and four attributes were identified. The most important factors were “the use of safety architecture and equipping with appropriate emergency exit accesses according to the standard” in highrise hospitals, “continuous firefighting training of the personnel” in wide hospitals, “use of fire extinguishing systems (automatic and manual)” in subsurface hospitals, “use of fire extinguishing systems (automatic and manual)” in combined hospitals, and “continuous firefighting training of the personnel” in portable hospitals.
 Conclusions: 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, the 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 systems, and extinguishing systems to prevent the spread of fire.