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According to the Department of Social Affairs, Ministry of the Interior, in November 2011 the statistic indicates that by the end of September 1993, the population of elderly people, over the age of 65, reached 1,485,200 which made up 7.09% of the entire population in Taiwan. It has achieved the standard of “aging society” established by WHO. As of November 2011, the number of people 65 and older raised to 2,523,533 that accounted for 10.87% of the population. The Department of Social Affairs estimates that by 2030 the whole population will be consist of 25% elderly people, signifying that there is one person 65 and older in every four people. Therefore, issues and concerns regarding the elderly people will certainly have impact on the society, including the safety of institutional care. Institutional care has been a result from the development of the society. Owing to the increase of two-working-spouse families and the change of living style, the growth of institutional care has been expanded yearly. Although residents can look after themselves, when it comes to emergency, these people are considered a vulnerable group. Some of them might have visual impairment, hearing impairment, mental retardation, disabilities or multiple disabilities. The illness often causes the residents receive emergency alert with great delay. After receiving emergency alert, they need to consume substantial amount of time to react to the emergency because some require assisting equipments. For instance, crutch, walker and wheelchair slowing down the evacuation process. Indeed, the assisting equipments considerably enhance difficulties in vertical evacuation. Due to global warming, the frequency of flood has soared. And also fire has been a common disaster in institutional care. This research will investigate in the occurrence of flood and fire how institutional care should operate and keep contact of the residents, and how to collaborate with external aid in order to lessen the damage to the minimum. The research could be a future reference to the establishment of institutional care’s operation plan or to the government’s disaster prevention plan.
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