• Journal of The Korea Institute of Healthcare Architecture
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.7-19
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• 2013

Purpose: The main objective of this paper is, first, to assess a body of research evidence that articulates the impact of environmental and design factors on safety, quality of life, and health of the elderly who reside in geriatric hospitals or other elderly care facilities and, second, to draw out design implications that can be incorporated into design process and design decisions to help create healing environments for the elderly. Methods: Extensive literature review has been conducted to identify rigorous empirical studies that link the design of elderly care facilities to health-related outcomes and scrutinized peer-reviewed articles published in many different fields including architecture, psychology, nursing to gerontology. Results: The review found a growing body of rigorous studies that identified physical environmental and design factors that improve safety, quality of life, and health of the elderly in geriatric hospitals or other elderly care facilities. Implications: The findings of the review can be translated to design decisions to promote safety, quality of life, and health of the elderly in geriatric hospitals or other elderly care facilities.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Clothing and Textiles
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• v.34 no.4
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• pp.642-652
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• 2010

This study examines the inconveniences and problems of established safety-equipment by investigating the actual conditions for elderly people who use welfare services such as wheel chairs provided by care institutions. Suggestions will be made on how to improve the function and convenience of use to suit the needs of the elderly and how to create beautiful wheel chair safety-wear. Medical treatment helpers for the elderly were surveyed about the wearing conditions of wheel chair safety equipment. The present wheel chair safety equipment was shown to be aesthetically unpleasant; in addition, feelings of restriction and unpleasantness were noted (concerning the wearing of the equipment). In addition, there was no feeling of fixed stability. The wheel chair safety-wear that has been designed reflects the inconveniences and problems of current wheel chair safety equipment in material, design, and patterns along with the results of those surveys. Both objective and subjective tests compared the manufactured safety-wear with current equipment. According to the results, the new safety-wear is superior than existing ones.

• Korean Journal of Community Nutrition
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.200-210
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• 2021

Objectives: This study was conducted to investigate the awareness, knowledge, and behavior about food hygiene·safety among the elderly, and to provide basic data on this for their healthy dietary life. Methods: The study was conducted through a survey using a self-administered questionnaire on 473 elderly people over 60 years old living in Seoul and Gyeonggido. The questionnaire was designed to examine general characteristics, meal preparation status, the relation between awareness, knowledge, food hygiene behavior, and safety. Results: Among the particpants, 44.2% of the total people surveyed were elderly married couples, and 14.0% were single-person households. For men, most of the meals were prepared by the spouse (74.1%), and among women, 93.8% prepared their meals themselves (P < 0.001). 61.3% of the total subjects answered that they were very interested in food hygiene and safety. Men (32.4%) thought it was more difficult to collect food hygiene·safety information compared to women (14.0%, P < 0.001). The knowledge score about food hygiene·safety was 0.60 (P < 0.05) and the behavior score was 3.70 (P < 0.001). The correlation coefficient between knowledge and behavior according to food hygiene·safety was 0.371 (P < 0.001). Conclusions: The food hygiene·safety behavior of the elderly was associated with knowledge (P < 0.001). Therefore, food hygiene·safety education is necessary to ensure information availability and promote the health of the elderly.

• Journal of Korea Multimedia Society
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• v.23 no.12
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• pp.1507-1518
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• 2020

Recently, as the proportion of the elderly population in Korea has increased rapidly, it has entered an aging society. As the scope of social activities of the elderly increases, the risk of safety accidents is also increasing. The traffic accident rate of elderly pedestrians is higher than ordinary people. Although various smart devices for the elderly are researched and developed, electronic components are often used. Electronic devices may not be able to be used if charging is not regularly. In this paper, a smart hat, a smart system for the elderly and the weak, was implemented using solar panels. The system uses solar energy to provide reliable use of smart devices. It is believed to be helpful not only for the elderly but also for the weak people by easy to wear the hat.

• International Journal of Internet, Broadcasting and Communication
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.227-236
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• 2024

Chinese high-rise hotels are large in size, densely populated, and have a lot of combustibles. Once a fire occurs, the fire and smoke spread rapidly, and once a fire accident occurs, it is easy to cause a large number of deaths. Fires have a greater impact on special populations such as elderly and children who move slowly. At present, research mainly focuses on the impact of high-rise building structures on evacuation consequences, but there is very little research on the safety evacuation consequences of elderly people and children in high-rise hotels. This paper focuses on the elderly and children living in high-rise hotels in China. We studied three scenarios in which the elderly and children were placed on high floors, middle floors, and low floors. For the above three scenarios, use pathfinder software for simulation, According to the simulation results, when the elderly and children are mainly concentrated in the lower floors (2nd and 3rd floors), the evacuation time is the shortest, 147 seconds. The evacuation time for the elderly and children on the middle floor (6th and 7th floors) is the longest, at 191.5 seconds. Compared to being placed on high floors, safely staying on low floors for all ages reduces evacuation time by 44.5 seconds and improves evacuation efficiency by 23.24%. The final safety evacuation plan is that in daily safety management, hotels should arrange elderly and children occupants on lower floors as much as possible to reduce the total evacuation time and improve personnel evacuation efficiency. This has great guiding significance in the safety management of high-rise hotels.

• Korean Journal of Artificial Intelligence
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• v.9 no.2
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• pp.15-21
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• 2021

This paper conducted a feasibility study by applying an Internet of Things and Artificial intelligence-based management system for the elderly living alone in an aging society. The number of single-person families over the age of 50 is expected to increase, and problems such as health, safety, and loneliness may occur due to aging. Therefore, by establishing an IoT-based care system for the elderly living alone, a stable service was developed through securing a rapid response system for the elderly living alone and automatically reporting 119. The participants of the demonstration test were subjects under the jurisdiction of the "Seongnam Senior Complex," and the data collection rate between the IoT sensor and the emergency safety gateway was high. During the demonstration period, as a result of evaluating the satisfaction of the IoT-based care system for the elderly living alone, 90 points were achieved. We are currently in the COVID-19 situation. Therefore, the number of elderly living alone is continuously increasing, and the number of people who cannot benefit from care services will continue to occur. Also, even if the COVID-19 situation is over, the epidemic will happen again. So the care system is essential. The elderly care system developed in this way will provide safety management services based on artificial intelligence-based activity pattern analysis, improving the quality of in-house safety services.

• Proceedings of the Korean Institute of Building Construction Conference
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• 2017.11a
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• pp.56-57
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• 2017

Recently, the nation's elderly facilities have grown rapidly since the implementation of the long-term care law in 2008. Also, older adults who use older facilities are also growing. With the increase in the number of fires, increasing the number of fires is also a social issue. In this study, the study conducted an investigation into the smoke control system to analyze the smoke control methods of the elderly and elderly citizens in order to secure the safety of the elderly facilities in the event of a fire, and investigated the smoke control status of the elderly in Korea.

• Safety and Health at Work
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.462-467
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• 2018

Background: This study was conducted to investigate the effects of work on medical expenditures by the elderly. Methods: Data pertaining to individuals aged 65 or older collected by the Korean Health Panel 2008-2013 were used. The effects of work on medical expenditures were analyzed in a panel tobit model adjusted for several variables of demographic factors, socioeconomic factors, and health factors for health care. Data were also analyzed based on age groups (65-74, $75{\leq}$), type of work (waged or self-employed), and working time (daytime work or night time work). Results: Among the elderly older than 65 years, 34-37% were workers. Work among the elderly reduced medical expenditures relative to nonworking elderly. Specifically, medical expenditures were lower in individuals older than 75 years, as well as among those who were self-employed insured and had medical aid insurance and those who exercised. However, medical expenditures were higher among females, married individuals, those with a higher household income, and those with a chronic disease. Elderly wageworkers showed reduced medical expenditures than nonworking elderly and elderly daytime workers did. Conclusion: The elderly population's work, especially wage work and daytime work, reduced medical expenditures relative to no work. These results provide valuable information for policymakers by indicating that work was associated with lower medical expenditures than no work. If elderly work is to be encouraged, it is necessary to provide a variety of high-quality wage work.

• Journal of the Korean housing association
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.21-29
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• 2008

To investigate the actual conditions on the living environment of group-homes for the elderly and their living environment, 4 group-homes were surveyed. As the results, conditions of location for the group-home of the elderly looked positive, on the other hand, safety for criminal prevention, accessability and convenient facilities were not on level satisfied. The average area of each space in the group-home indicated that the bed room was $11.21\;m^2$, the living room $28.13\;m^2$, the kitchen $23.59\;m^2$, and the bath room had an integrated type of bath room and toilet $7.63\;m^2$. The physical environments of each space in the group-home were investigated, In bed room, door, windows and illumination were relatively good but safety was extremely inferior. Living room mostly looked good except the doorsill which needs refurbishment. In kitchen, cooking table, windows, illumination, ventilator were somewhat satisfactory but gas-warning device should have been installed. In addition, in bath room and toilet, location, door, window, illumination and finished material were satisfactory. But the stepped difference between the bath room and other space, safety-bar, emergency bell and floor heating system were seriously deteriorated and must be improved for the safety of the elderly. Conclusively, living environment of group-home for the elderly is mainly satisfactory but it was necessary to take a consideration for their safety.

• Journal of KIBIM
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• v.7 no.4
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• pp.21-30
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• 2017

Due to the rapidly aging population, the death rate of elderly people by safety accidents has been increasing. In particular, precautions are needed for falls prevention because they either directly or indirectly cause death. In the case of elderly people, most of the fall accidents occur in dense residential areas, and particularly, the staircase poses a risk of falling. Therefore, a safety assessment should be performed from the design phase. However, in general, staircases are designed using existing stair data or only aims to satisfy the installation criteria. Laws and regulations only define minimum requirements for safety, so it is not possible to prevent fall accidents even if they satisfy the requirements. Therefore, this study proposes a simulation-based method for evaluating the safety of staircases. The behavioral characteristics of the elderly are implemented to an virtual user in a virtual space including staircases, and fall accidents are evaluated by the evaluation logic related to the behavioral characteristics. The result shows that the safety of staircases can be preevaluated and reflected on the design to reduce the possibility of fall accidents of the elderly.