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R. Jiraschek:
"Improving Child Safety in Residential Buildings via Architectural Design and Technology Integration";
Supervisor: A. Mahdavi; Continuing Education Center, 2007; final examination: 2007-07-05.

This work intends to create design guidelines based on the classification of design elements in residential buildings according to risk levels. It suggests the inclusion of safety aspects in children´s immediate environment by better design solutions and technologies which can help to prevent home accidents that mainly affect children aged between 0 and 4 years. The guidelines could help to create new building and design standards for architects and the building industry. They are based on research, conducted mainly in the European Union and the United States of America, into regulations and programs focusing on the prevention of home accidents. This work may be of benefit to parents, manufacturers, the building industry, architects and governments. Parents may benefit, obviously, because they get information on how to decrease the number of hazards within their children´s environment. It may help manufacturers improve their safety standards. Consumers may choose from a range of safer products. It may prompt the building industry to create safer designs and products thus avoiding liability claims. It may inspire architects to a more safety-oriented design. Finally governments could reduce health costs - in Austria alone, for example, more than Euro 3.4 billion a year are spent on home and leisure accidents.

accident prevention, hazards, risk assessment, design guideline

http://publik.tuwien.ac.at/files/pub-ar_7973.pdf