Fire Protection Research Foundation report: "Egress Modelling in Health Care Occupancies" (PDF)
Author: Virginia Alonso, GIDAI Group, University of Cantabria
Date of issue: July 2014
Introduction
During the revision cycle for the 2015 edition of NFPA 101, Life Safety Code, there was a proposed change to increase the maximum allowable size of a smoke compartment in health-care occupancies from 22,500 ft2 (2,090 m2) to 40,000 ft2 (3,700 m2) – almost double the size (the maximum travel distance of 200 ft (61 m) to smoke barrier would remain the same).
This change could affect the evacuation/relocation of patients during an emergency in a health-care facility. In this work, the computational model STEPS is used for analyzing different scenarios for sleeping areas in health care facilities. The scenarios studied focused on the change in compartment size as well as the staff to patient ratio.