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The goal of this project was to develop practical strategies for preventing building‐related symptoms in office buildings, based on the experience of those who investigate buildings with health complaints, and suitable for use by those who own, lease, or manage office space.

Ideas from six experienced building investigators on primary causes and key prevention strategies were gathered and prioritized through consensus and voting in a structured, multi‐day workshop.

IEQ investigators from diverse climatic regions agreed on the most important problems causing symptom complaints in office buildings, and the key strategies for prevention. The top ranked problems identified were, in priority order: excessive building moisture, inadequate outdoor air, excessive dust, pollutant gases and odors, inadequate thermal control, and inadequate attention by management to indoor environments. The highest priority recommended prevention strategies for building‐related symptoms were: managing moisture at building exteriors, operating ventilation systems per design intent, providing at least the minimum recommended ventilation rates, and maintaining indoor temperatures at 72°F±2° (22°C±1°). Available scientific findings were generally consistent with these recommendations.

Validity of these findings, from a subjective synthesis of empirical knowledge, not from scientific research, has not yet been scientifically confirmed.

These recommendations, including managing moisture at building exteriors, providing adequate ventilation, and controlling indoor thermal conditions, provide practical, empirically based guidelines for those who own, manage, or maintain office buildings.

The empirical knowledge of practitioners, concentrated and synthesized here, offers more direct guidance for health‐protective strategies in office buildings than current science.

The purpose of this paper is to set forth a rigorous methodology for building owners and managers to conduct a vulnerability assessment of their facilities. Such a process would facilitate the use of remediation measures to limit the loss of life and property during a disaster, whether natural or man‐made.

The author sets forth nine criteria to conduct a vulnerability assessment, along with a six‐point rating system. The criteria selected are: the level of visibility, the criticality of the site to the jurisdiction in which it is located, the impact of the site outside of the jurisdiction in which it is located, access to the site, size hazards, building height, type of construction, site population capacity, and the potential for collateral mass casualties. This evaluative process leads to five site vulnerability ratings, ranked as follows: negligible, low, medium, high, and critical.

Property owners and building managers can use this process to assess the vulnerability of their facilities and, based on this process and the resulting vulnerability rating, initiate common‐sense remediation measures to limit the loss of life and property, should a disaster occur.

The field of vulnerability assessment is a new discipline within the evolving subject of homeland security. Other methodologies will be needed in the future to determine the vulnerability of other public and private facilities, such as ports, airports, transportation centers, hospitals, colleges and universities, and other vital public and private facilities.

This research provides a framework for future research on the topic of vulnerability assessments. Refinements and modifications can be made to the proposed methodology (both to the vulnerability assessment criteria and to the vulnerability ratings).

This paper provides original research and sets forth a new methodology for conducting vulnerability assessments of public and private buildings.

The objective of this paper is to investigate approaches pertaining to the safe evacuation of occupants from multiplex facilities during fire emergencies.

The paper analyzes the published literature for the purpose of identifying the frequent causes of ignition in multiplex facilities and examining the set of factors that render multiplex facilities to be high‐risk facilities in fire emergences. The paper then describes the set of prescriptive international building regulations for the means of egress in public assembly facilities, as being the thresholds of the minimum safety levels that are acceptable to society; and presents a set of proposed guidelines for facility managers to observe in their day‐to‐day operation of multiplex facilities.

The paper has established that multiplex facilities are high‐risk buildings in fire emergencies. The role of facilities managers in the operation and maintenance stages of multiplex facilities has been discussed for the purposes of achieving safe evacuation of occupants and improved crowd management.

This paper provides for a better comprehension of the roles of design professional and facility managers involved in the design and operation of multiplex facilities in the provision and maintenance of adequate means of egress in such facilities.

The purpose of this paper is to attempt to assess the seismic vulnerability of the built environment in the Himalayan township of Mussoorie in the state of Uttarakhand (India), paying specific attention to hospitals. Also an attempt is made to assess the magnitude of minimum economic losses, so as to design and undertake measures for reducing human misery in the event of a major disaster.

Seismic vulnerability of the building stock is evaluated using FEMA technique rapid visual screening and the likely earthquake induced damage is depicted as a function of the damage grades of the European Macroseismic Scale (EMS‐98). In total, 3,344 buildings, including 14 hospitals, are surveyed. In the field the structures are mapped using IKONOS satellite imagery while the collected data are analysed under geographic information system environment.

It was found that 18 percent of surveyed structures fall in high probability of Grade 5 damage and very high probability of Grade 4 damage class. This is estimated to result in economic loss of US$52.47 million. Almost, 80 percent of the hospitals of Mussoorie are thus likely to be non‐functional in the post‐earthquake phase due to varying degrees of structural and non‐structural damage.

The study does not account for the cost of demolition or ground clearance cost for reconstruction, or losses likely to be incurred by public infrastructure. Thus, it is implied that retrofitting and replacement of vulnerable healthcare infrastructure should be facilitated on a priority basis along with development of suitable plans for mitigating losses in an earthquake event.

The study brings forth the importance of corrective actions (retrofitting/replacement) and detailed vulnerability assessment of all lifeline structures on priority basis.

The results are intended to reduce seismic vulnerability and human toll in the event of any earthquake in the area.

The work is based upon the original data generated by the authors through rigorous fieldwork in the area and the results are totally based on these.

After the outbreak of the disease of “Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS)” in Asia in 2003, a healthy living environment is a major concern. The purpose of this paper is to study the value of healthy building parameters by the Contingent Valuation Method (CVM), which gives a direct appraisal of the occupants' value.

Healthy building parameters were identified in previous studies. Questionnaires are distributed to residents of a large‐scale high‐rise private housing estate in Hong Kong to find out their willingness to pay (WTP) for individual healthy building parameters.

The results suggest that most residents are willing to pay for healthy building parameters, each with a different value.

The paper is limited to studying the eight identified building parameters for healthy buildings. The sample of the study is confined in a private housing estate only and all the occupants are middle class citizens of Hong Kong. The results of the study can be further validated by carrying out similar research with the support of the government or quasi‐government bodies to cover a larger sample size for a better return rate.

The findings have practical implications on cost‐and‐benefit analysis of housing design.

Housing price is commonly regarded as the total value of a bundle of housing quality and environmental characteristics. The implicit price of individual quality and characteristic is often identified by the hedonic pricing model. However, its validity depends on a lot of econometric assumptions. The study is the first to be conducted after the outbreak of SARS in Hong Kong to gauge the opinions of residents on health/economy issues

The purpose of this study is to introduce and evaluate the effect of critical success factors (CSF) in rescue operations in burning buildings by calculating the partial least squares structural equation modeling of PLS-SEM.

To do this, success criteria (SC) and CSF in the literature, which are related to the topic, articles, standards and relevant books, will be identified and then evaluated through the extended PLS-SEM model.

The results show that technological factors, awareness, resources and safety play an effective role in successful performance management in fire accidents.

Appropriate use of these factors will promote incident management and decrease casualties and financial loss in the event of accidents.

Fire-fighting is of great importance, especially in tall and complex buildings. In recent years, extended studies have been carried out regarding fire accident management in terms of CSFs in the category of rescue and firefighting. However, attention has not been paid to the relation and severity of impact between SC and CSF by researchers in addition to the identification of the most important criteria during rescue operations.

Limitations in space and city planning constraints have led to the search for alternative shock mitigation devices that are architecturally appealing. The purpose of this paper is to consider a compromise solution which consists of partially open, thick, bending-resistant shapes made of acrylic material that may be Kevlar- or steel-reinforced. Seven different configurations were analyzed numerically.

For the flow solver, the FEM-FCT scheme as implemented in FEFLO is used. The flowfields are initialized from the output of highly detailed 1-D (spherically symmetric) runs. Peak pressure and impulse are stored and compared. In total, seven different configurations were analyzed numerically.

It is found that for some of these, the maximum pressure is comparable to usual, closed walls, and the maximum impulse approximately 50 percent higher. This would indicate that such designs offer a blast mitigation device eminently suitable for built-up city environments.

Future work will consider fully coupled fluid-structure runs for the more appealing designs, in order to assess whether such devices can be manufactured from commonly available materials such as acrylics or other poly-carbonates.

This would indicate that such designs offer a blast mitigation device eminently suitable for built-up city environments.

This is the first time such a semi-open blastwall approach has been tried and analyzed.

The current fire protection measures in buildings do not account for all contemporary fire hazard issues, which has made fire safety a growing concern. Therefore, this paper aims to present a critical review of current fire protection measures and their applicability to address current challenges relating to fire hazards in buildings.

To overcome fire hazards in buildings, impact of fire hazards is also reviewed to set the context for fire protection measures. Based on the review, an integrated framework for mitigation of fire hazards is proposed. The proposed framework involves enhancement of fire safety in four key areas: fire protection features in buildings, regulation and enforcement, consumer awareness and technology and resources advancement. Detailed strategies on improving fire safety in buildings in these four key areas are presented, and future research and training needs are identified.

Current fire protection measures lead to an unquantified level of fire safety in buildings, provide minimal strategies to mitigate fire hazard and do not account for contemporary fire hazard issues. Implementing key measures that include reliable fire protection systems, proper regulation and enforcement of building code provisions, enhancement of public awareness and proper use of technology and resources is key to mitigating fire hazard in buildings. Major research and training required to improve fire safety in buildings include developing cost-effective fire suppression systems and rational fire design approaches, characterizing new materials and developing performance-based codes.

The proposed framework encompasses both prevention and management of fire hazard. To demonstrate the applicability of this framework in improving fire safety in buildings, major limitations of current fire protection measures are identified, and detailed strategies are provided to address these limitations using proposed fire safety framework.

Fire represents a severe hazard in both developing and developed countries and poses significant threat to life, structure, property and environment. The proposed framework has social implications as it addresses some of the current challenges relating to fire hazard in buildings and will enhance overall fire safety.

The novelty of proposed framework lies in encompassing both prevention and management of fire hazard. This is unlike current fire safety improvement strategies, which focus only on improving fire protection features in buildings (i.e. managing impact of fire hazard) using performance-based codes. To demonstrate the applicability of this framework in improving fire safety in buildings, major limitations of current fire protection measures are identified and detailed strategies are provided to address these limitations using proposed fire safety framework. Special emphasis is given to cost-effectiveness of proposed strategies, and research and training needs for further enhancing building fire safety are identified.

The use of building information modelling (BIM) methodology has been increasing in the architecture, engineering, construction and operation sector, driven to a new paradigm of work with the use of three-dimensional (3D) parametric models. However, building information modelling (BIM) has been mostly used for as-built models of a building, not yet been widely used by designers during project and construction phases for occupational risks prevention and safety planning. This paper aims to show the capacity of developing tools that allow adding functionalities to Revit software to improve safety procedures and reduce the time spent on modelling them during the design phase.

To reach this objective, a structural 3D model of a building is used to validate the developed tools. A plugin prototype based on legal regulations was developed, allowing qualitative safety assessment through the application of job hazard analysis (JHA), SafeObject and checklists. These tools allow the automated detection of falls from height situations and the automated placement of the correspondent safety systems.

Revit application programming interface allowed the conception and addition of several functionalities that can be used in BIM methodology, and more specifically in the prevention of occupational risks in construction, contributing this paper to the application of a new approach to the prevention through design.

This paper is innovative and important because the developed plugins allowed: automated detection of potential falls from heights in the design stage; automated introduction of safety objects from a BIM Safety Objects Library; and the intercommunication between a BIM model and a safety database, bringing JHA integration directly on the project. The prototype of this work was validated for fall from height hazards but can be extended to other potentials hazards since the initial design stage.

This research presents the applicable international fire code requirements for educational facilities, in a comprehensive manner, and the findings of a case study to assess the level of compliance with these requirements.

A review of literature, fire codes and standards was conducted to identify the various sources of fire hazards in educational facilities and the required prevention measures. Accordingly, a code-compliance worksheet for assessing the fire prevention measures was developed. The worksheet included 34 prevention measures. It was implemented in a pharmacy college building, as a case study, to assess the compliance level with the code requirements. Recommendations were developed to improve the level of fire prevention in the case study facility.

The implemented worksheet facilitated identifying all the shortcomings in the prevention measures, in a methodological manner. These shortcomings included exceeded travel distance, absence of assembly point, inactive record keeping of fire inspection and maintenance works, deterioration of some extension cords and switches, alteration of some emergency doors, storage of combustibles in some electrical rooms and obstructions of the fire apparatus access road.

The research provides an assessment tool for fire prevention in educational facilities, which can be used by professionals for a code-compliant inspection. The findings of the case study as an example serve to expand the inspectors' observational significance while reducing subjectivity.

This research contributes to the educational facilities' context of health and safety domain in the literature. The research classifies the required fire prevention measures for an educational facility, according to the international applicable codes and standards. The case study demonstrates an applicable methodology for assessing the fire prevention measures and requirements.