jailcd2020009: Environmental Visibility Analysis of Patients in Hospital based on Building Information Modelling

Abstract

Present studies have proven that plants — for example, trees and flowers, can effectively support patients' recovery and health during their hospitalization. It leads to that vegetative landscape design plays an important role in improving the overall quality of built environments. This study aims to explore a new mode that applies the collision detection technologies of BIM programs to analyze the environmental visibility of patients while staying in bed. By these technologies, architects can be interactively reminded to focus on patients' visibility to plants in the stage of design. A pilot study will be conducted first, in order to explore the experienced architects' understanding of environmental visibility and human health. It attempts to investigate architects' application situation of plants in hospitals. On the basis of the results, several patterns that use collision detection of BIM to analyze the environmental visibility of patients are discussed. A framework is proposed, which attempts to test such patterns in BIM programs. Finally, the pattern which has the best comprehensive feasibility will be programmed into a plug-in of BIM programs in the future research, which can be seen as a design-aided tool to optimize the design quality and health performance of medical buildings.