- Author
-
Stahl, F. I.
- Title
- Designing for Access to, Movement Within, and Egress from Building and Sites: Effective Research for More Reasonable Regulation.
- Coporate
- National Bureau of Standards, Gaithersburg, MD
- Sponsor
- National Conference of States on Building Codes and Standards, Washington, DC
- Report
-
NBS SP 552,
- Distribution
- Available from Government Printing Office
- Book or Conf
- National Bureau of Standards. Research and Innovation in the Building Regulatory Process. 3rd Annual NBS/NCSBCS Joint Conference. In Conjunction with the 11th Annual Meeting of the National Conference of States on Building Codes and Standards, Inc. September 12, 1978.,
National Bureau of Standards,
Annapolis, MD,
Cooke, P. W., Editors,
101-114 p.,
1979
- Keywords
-
building design
|
evaluation
|
exits
|
measurement
|
regulations
|
safety
|
standards
- Abstract
- This paper discusses needs for a more complete and effective technical basis for design standards impacting occupant's access to, movement within, and egress from buildings and building sites. It is suggested that a major cause of injury and death from fire, and of inconvenience and psychological stigmatizaion to physically handicapped persons, results (even in code-complying buildings and sites) from adherence to design regulations narrowly founded upon physical and engineering principles alone. This paper recommends that psychological aspects of dangerous and stressful situations guide the development of standards for emergency egress facility design, and that such therpeutic objectives as "normalizaion" guide development of barrier-free design regulations. Finally, this paper outlines particular programmatic themes and research tasks, and discusses the role of the National Bureau of Standards in improving the technical basis for egress and accessibility design regulations.