THE IMPACT OF HOSPITAL EVACUATION ROUTE DESIGNS ON BRAINWAVE ACTIVITY AND WAYFINDING COGNITION PERFORMANCE DURING FIRE EVACUATION

Abstract

In hospital buildings, fires are a significant risk, and occupants’ failure to evacuate can result in death. Therefore, efficient hospital fire evacuation is important. Hospital evacuation routes are among the most challenging to design due to complex indoor environments and restricted circulation. Additionally, not every hospital user has spatial familiarity due to the restricted public access, making it difficult to navigate unfamiliar evacuation routes. Human wayfinding, which involves wayfinding cognition performance, has a big impact on how effectively one can carry out navigational tasks. To ensure safe evacuation, aspects of hospital physical design, in particular evacuation routes, must be improved. However, when outlining the ideal evacuation route design, hospital building guidelines rarely take wayfinding cognition aspects into account. A neuroscientific understanding of the relationship between hospital evacuation route designs and wayfinding cognition is timely given the emergence of neuroarchitecture research which applies neuroscientific methodologies in architectural studies for more accurate assessment of human behaviour. This article proposes a neuroarchitecture framework outlining a clear relationship between these aspects through critical review of the literature whereby potential applications of EEG brainwaves are also highlighted. Findings can promote hospital evacuation route designs that optimize wayfinding cognition performance to ensure occupants’ safety.