A study on floor plan design for postpartum care centers considering egress safety

In recent years, the use of postpartum care centers by new mothers for recovery after childbirth has increased across Asia. This growth has prompted research on optimizing the floor plan design of these centers to improve user satisfaction. A critical consideration is that swift and safe egress during a fire event can be challenging for mothers and newborns because of their physical vulnerability. Moreover, the instinct of mothers to evacuate with their babies can lead to bottlenecks in the neonatal unit, where newborns are gathered, potentially leading to severe casualties. In this study, the egress safety of a typical postpartum care center was evaluated in the event of a fire. Egress simulations were conducted for various scenarios using variables that included the location of the neonatal unit and the floor level of the postpartum care center. The required safe egress time (RSET) and bottlenecks were assessed based on the location of the neonatal unit for each scenario. Based on the analyses, an egress time assessment model was established for postpartum care centers. The proposed model incorporated bottlenecks, and recommendations for selecting the optimal neonatal unit location were made to improve RSET-based egress performance.