Integrated approach for older adult friendly home staircase architectural design

The older adult population requires special consideration in terms of interior architectural design. This paper presents a methodology which aims to investigate the risk of falling associated with the architectural design of staircase elements, in order to suggest best practices to create elderly-friendly design that enhances safety for older adults. The proposed methodology uses the concept of evidence-based assessment to evaluate staircase elements such as handrail and step design. This paper also presents a scenario-based rating system that assesses the degree of the risk of falling for different types of architectural staircase design. The proposed rating system was incorporated into a mathematical model and a Design Assessment Tree (DAT) that calculate the degree of risk associated with architectural staircase design to facilitate a building information modeling (BIM) approach. A hypothetical case study is presented to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed methodology and highlights the essential features of the proposed model.