Simulation-Based Analysis of Evacuation Elevator Allocation for a Multi-Level Hospital Emergency Department

Evacuation planning for hospital emergency departments is challenging because of the large number of patients with limited mobility due to severe illness. For trolley-ridden patients, elevators are often the only available mode for vertical evacuations. Thus, allocation of trolley-ridden patients to elevators is important to reduce vertical evacuation time with limited number of elevators. We developed a simulation model of vertical evacuation using elevators and applied the model to the future Singapore General Hospital emergency department as a case study. In the case study, we divided trolley-ridden patients into several groups based on their locations and evaluated the maximum evacuation time for various allocation setups. Simulation results show that evacuation on the lower level is sensitive to the allocation on the upper level. The overlapping utilization of the shared elevator by each level may lead to long queuing time at the lower levels and consequently increase the overall evacuation time.