Based on the Paper “Ontology Development 101: A Guide to Creating Your First Ontology“ by Noy/McGuiness (2001), I created an ontological model for the civil engineered product of a hospital. Different to other products, like a road or a bridge, which perfectly fit into a specific category of infrastructure, a hospital is a very complex system with many touch points in several infrastructure systems, like that defined by the city protocol group (cityprotocal.org, 21.11.2016). To include this complexity, I integrated the ontology for the hospital in a broader context of the city by considering communication networks, water cycle, energy cycle, matter cycle, mobility networks and nature as the main classes. Furthermore I defined general class material, that did not fit in one of these infrastructure categories. I included the hospital in the class for the matter cycle –CtpMatterCycle–.

Aside from the subclass “Hospital” which contains hospitals with defined properties, there is a separation between the functions of a hospital in the subclass “HospComponents” and the construction parts in the subclass “HospDomain.” This is useful because in a civil engineering view a hospital is a normal building, apart from some specific parts, like lead walls. It is the special function that makes it a hospital.

Based on the books of Capolongo et al. (2015) and Hosking/Haggard (2002) I identified special functions unique to a hospital. Hosking/Haggard (2002) make a clear statement about what functional rooms are to be found at the most hospitals from the most important are: entrance area, large communal areas like foyers and waiting rooms, circulation areas, radiological station, anesthetic and recovery rooms, operation rooms, cafeterias, patient wards, staff areas, administration areas and offices as well as storages. All these functional rooms will be considered in the model.

Considering the different functions, a hospital has, it is very complex to model a whole hospital based on a few input parameters. The design depends very much on, how many patients should be taken care of, what kind of functions are needed, how are the delivery routes or are single bed- rooms or triple-bedrooms needed. On the design side, there are no real characteristics that distinguish a hospital from a normal building. To keep it simple I made some restrictions to the hospital model.

• the thickness of structures, including walls, are 0m
• the hospital only has patients-rooms
• only double-bed-rooms
• bed rooms have a standard measurement of 5m x 3.2m, which reflects minimum sizes fora hospital double-bed-room (KhBauV0)
• the hall way has a minimum width of 2.25m (KhBauV0)
• the height of a floor is 3.5m
• min. inputs are restricted to 7m, because of the minimum limitation of rooms and hall way

Based on these restrictions I created the concept of parametric modelling in Blender and Sverchok. The main input Parameter should be as simple as possible. For the beginning I reduced the parameter to the size of the potential building site, which is displayed by the length of side x and side y. Later, I added the size of the building for convenience reasons. The proportion between the building and the area around, which is supposed to be used for regeneration, should be appropriate. (§2 KhsVO) I choose an appropriate proportion to be 50/50, so that half the area of the site can be the building. For that reason, I multiply the input parameter by the square root of 0.5 for further use in the modelling process.

Holst et al (2013) present different section typologies of a hospital design. Depending on the size and the design of the building different concepts can be considered.

Capolongo, Stefano et al. (2015): Improving Sustainability During Hospital Design and Operation, A Multidisciplinary Evaluation Tool, Springer International Publishing Switzerland

http://www.cptf.cityprotocol.org/ancha/CPWD/CPA-I_001_Anatomy_Revised.pdf [29.10.2016]

Deutsches Institut für Normung e.V. (2014): DIN 6847 -2, Medizinische Elektronenbeschleuniger-Anlagen – Teil 2: Regeln für die Auslegung des baulichen Strahlenschutzes, Beuth Verlag GmbH, Berlin

Krötzsch, Markus et al. (2013): A Description Logic Primer, Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford, UK

Noy, Natalya F. and McGuinness, Deborah L. (2000): Ontology Development 101: A Guide to Creating Your First Ontology, Stanford University, Stanford

Sarah Hosking and Liz Haggard (2002): Healing the Hospital Environment, Design, management and maintenance of healthcare premises, Routledge, New York