Abstract
Background: The rate of disability is rising in Canada as many individuals are now experiencing functional limitations due to aging, joining those with injuries and permanent or temporary impairments. In emergency situations, these individuals as well as first responders are at an increased risk of injury due to evacuation guidelines in Canada being out of date and not based on best available evidence. The Canadian evacuation guidelines were published in 2002, highlighting the immediate need to revise egressibility standards for individuals with functional limitations.
Objective: The objective of this project is to summarize the best available evidence on solutions for evacuating individuals with functional limitations from the built environment.
Methods: We will perform a scoping review to identify current solutions used to evacuate this population. The literature search will be structured around three concepts: functional limitation, evacuation, and built environment.
Results: Two-dimensional matrices will be created – the first to list solutions appropriate for existing buildings and the second to list solutions appropriate for new buildings. Each matrix will list building types across one axis and individual functional limitations along the other axis, with each cell containing a list of possible evacuation solutions for a given building type and individual with a specific limitation.
Conclusions: Results will inform the public on current evacuation protocols for individuals with functional limitations and highlight areas for improvement regarding safe egressibility. The outputs of this project will also provide a comprehensive toolkit useful for improving protocols for evacuating this population from the built environment.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
References
Proulx, G.: Evacuation Time and Movement in Apartment Buildings. Fire Saf. J. 24, 229–246 (1995)
Draft CCBFC Policy Position Paper - Accessibility in Buildings. Canadian Commission on Building and Fire Codes, 1–34 (2018).
Lin, Y.S.: Life risk analysis in residential building fires. J. Fire Sci. 22(6), 491–504 (2004)
Morris, S., Fawcett, G., Brisebois, L., Hughes, J.: Canadians Survey on Disabilities: A demographic, employment and income profile, 2017. Statistics Canada, 1–3 (2018)
Chapter 1: Understanding disability. World report on disability, pp. 1–17 (2011)
Government of Canada, “Accessible Canada Act - Loi canadienne sur l’accessibilité.” Ministry of Justice, 1–82 (2019).
Verbrugge, L.M., Jette, A.M.: The disablement process. Soc. Sci. Med. 38(1), 1–14 (1994)
Proulx, G.: Evacuation planning for occupants with disability. National Research Council Canada, IRC-IR-843, pp. 1–26 (2002)
Decady, Y., Greenberg, L.: Ninety years of change in life expectancy. Statistics Canada, Health Glance. 82, 1–10 (2014)
Disability in Canada: initial findings from the Canadian Survey on Disability. Statistics Canada (2013)
Korotchenko, A., Hurd Clarke, L.: Power mobility and the built environment: the experiences of older Canadians. Disabil. Soc. 29(3), 431–443 (2014)
Aizhu, R., Chi, C., Yuan, L.: Simulation of emergency evacuation in virtual reality. Tsinghua Sci. Technol. 13(5), 674–680 (2008)
Arksey, H., O’Malley, L.: Scoping studies: Towards a methodological framework. Int. J. Soc. Res. Methodol. Theory Pract. 8(1), 19–32 (2005)
The Joanna Briggs Institute: The Joanna Briggs Institute Reviewers' Manual 2015 edition / Supplement. The Joanne Briggs Institute., pp. 1–24 (2015)
How to use the ICF: A practical manual for using the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). World Health Organization, Exposure draft for comment (2013)
Tall Buildings Guidelines. City of Toronto. (2013)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2021 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG
About this paper
Cite this paper
Sharma, Y. et al. (2021). Revising Recommendations for Evacuating Individuals with Functional Limitations from the Built Environment. In: Black, N.L., Neumann, W.P., Noy, I. (eds) Proceedings of the 21st Congress of the International Ergonomics Association (IEA 2021). IEA 2021. Lecture Notes in Networks and Systems, vol 220. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74605-6_44
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-74605-6_44
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-030-74604-9
Online ISBN: 978-3-030-74605-6
eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)