Successful Deriving Evacuation Factors of the Korean Aged

Objective: This study is a convergence research of social welfare, naval architecture, and ocean engineering for developing software of practical evacuation simulation for land/marine structures including social welfare facilities (elderly welfare facilities). Methods: In order to develop technologies of evacuation environment and object (evacuation subject) modeling, evacuation simulation, analysis/result visualization, etc. for life rescue in emergent situations such as fire, this study conducted an actual test at the Nam-gu Senior Welfare Center, and derived an evacuation test procedure and evaluation method from testing with elderly users, 15 persons. Findings: This study also developed Elderly Classification for Safe Evacuation (ECSE) usable in deriving factors for safe evacuation based on related literature. Crisis management is an extension of daily and structural risk management, and all structures designed and constructed should be evaluated technologically for the management. In this sense, such evaluation technologies should be developed first. The technology developed in this study is a system that enables prior testing of land and marine structures for the risk of disasters, and is usable at design and operation departments. Particularly in the operation of social welfare residential facilities for the social weak, one of the most important factors is life safety in emergency situations such as fire. All the licensed social welfare facilities are required to have guidelines for safety management and fire safety equipment according to relevant laws and regulations, but safety evaluation is still based on qualitative judgment, and there are few quantitative grounds for assessing the safety of target facilities. Improvements/Applications: Through these processes, evacuation simulation S/W satisfying the IMO Guideline was developed successfully for the first time in Korea. This study introduces the process of deriving safety factors before the development of virtual reality-based evacuation software.