Evidence-Based Assessment of Geometrical Staircase Configurations for Older Adults

Maintaining safety for older adults aged 65 years and older is a challenge that could be addressed by applying conscious design. Accordingly, the concept of creating a home environment which enhances safety for older adults becomes essential. Considering that staircases vary widely in their geometrical configurations, this paper presents an evidence-based assessment for geometrical staircase configurations from the perspective of reducing the risk of falling for older adults. The methodology is divided into two stages: 1) identifying the most common geometrical home staircase configurations, which include U-shape stairs, quarter turn stairs, straight stairs with landing, straight stairs without landing, helical stairs, spiral stairs, and composite stairs; 2) investigating the associated risk of falling for each geometrical staircase configuration through developing an evidence-based comparison for the proposed geometrical staircase configurations. The output of this paper is a hierarchical listing for geometrical staircase configurations which is arranged from lowest to highest reduction in risk of falling for older adults.