Evaluating Staircase Safety Using BIM-based Virtual Simulation: Focusing on the Elderly in the Republic of Korea

As the population is aging, accidents involving elderly people are also increasing (2014:11,667 persons; 2018: 11,797 persons). In the case of the elderly population, falling accidents are the primary direct or indirect causes of death; in particular, they face an elevated risk of staircase falls. This study proposes a method of evaluating the safety of staircases using Building Information Modeling (BIM)-based virtual simulation. By making a virtual user with the behavioral characteristics of the elderly respond to a staircase in a BIM model, its safety performance can be evaluated. The evaluation criteria were derived from regulations, elements, and characteristics relevant to the safety of staircases. To validate the proposed method, safety evaluation tests were simulated on actual staircases. The evaluation result of the test simulation shows the safety scores of 1.97 points for the elderly user and 2.95 points for the average male adult user against a required safety score of a minimum of 2 points. That is, safety is relative to users as the safety of the same staircase can be different depending upon the different behavioral characteristics of users. The study suggests that the risk of staircase-related fall accidents to the elderly can be reduced by improving staircase designs through the proposed method.