student dormitory

In recent years, the expansion of higher education centers and universities has led to a growing number of students and student dormitories. Due to the large number of students in the dormitories, fires and accidents in these areas are considered as a serious threat. In this regard several measures have been taken to limit and reduce injury in dormitories in the event of an accident involving both structural and non-structural measures. These measures first provide safety and then enhance the environmental potential for rapid evacuation (i+n the event of an accident). Therefore, several studies have focused on reducing evacuation duration by simulating emergency evacuation. For this purpose, this paper simulates the human evacuation in the student dormitory of Block 1 of Shahid Beheshti University (with 178 students simulated) during the accident in Pathfinder software. In addition, physical depth and visual depth were analyzed by input-based Depth map software to reduce spatial hierarchy and faster access. The simulation results showed that preliminary optimization of the dormitory with furniture and equipment (non-structural measures) was a prerequisite for dormitory immunization to be evacuated, but due to its negligible effect on evacuation time (from 223.7 seconds to 219.8 seconds) it is not enough. Therefore, after optimization with furniture and equipment, the dormitory was evaluated with two methods of structural intervention (construction of emergency stairs with two exit doors) and reduction of the population of users. In the first method, with the structural intervention, the evacuation time was reduced from 219.8 seconds to 150.5 seconds, and in the second method by reducing the population of users in the end of second and third floors from 4 to 3 persons, evacuation time decreased from 219.8 seconds to 178.8 seconds which was suggested as a less expensive method. In the end, a method was proposed to make the dormitory work efficient with respect to the spatial configuration for emergency evacuation.

The purpose of this study is to analyze of the challenges and solutions regarding conversion of Allameh Tabataba’i University student dormitories into small learning communities. This piece of research has been carried out by means of mixed research methods of exploration and development of tools both qualitatively and quantitatively. Respondents in the qualitative section include 25 faculty members, dormitory administrators and dormitory students who have been interviewed using the purposive sampling method and the snowball method. Moreover, in the quantitative phase, the statistical population consists of the 3150 students living in dormitories at Allameh Tabataba’i University out of whom 340 students were identified and studied using the stratified random sampling method. In order to collect the quantitative data, two researcher-developed questionnaires of challenges and solutions designed at the qualitative phase were applied the reliability of which were put at 87% and 96% respectively through calculation of the Cronbach’s alpha. Theoretical foundations, previous research as well as qualitative findings of this study indicate that the challenges of changing student dormitories into small learning communities and their corresponding solutions include four axes: a) structural and management, b) cultural and social, c) scientific-professional and d) intrapersonal. In the quantitative study, the results indicate that the respondents have confirmed all the challenges and solutions identified in the qualitative study based on the above topics. In addition, the results show that there is no significant difference between respondent's views on the challenges and solutions associated with the conversion of Allameh Tabataba’i University student dormitories to small learning communities by dormitory, gender and educational level.