SAVE

Infection prevention design to protect critical infrastructure.

In the SAVE project, researchers from the fields of architecture, hygiene, building engineering, materials science, design and epidemiology developed interdisciplinary effective strategies for controlling and managing pathogen spread routes to protect critical infrastructures. The central question of the research project was which structural, procedural, ventilation and hygienic measures can reduce the risk of infection for users and employees within the critical infrastructures of schools, kindergartens, medical practices and retirement and nursing homes. The recommendations developed are aimed at making new and existing buildings suitable for preventive, reactive and adaptive measures to interrupt infection chains. This should reduce incidents of illness in normal operations and enable continued operation in pandemic situations.

The current pandemic had shown that there is a lack of knowledge how to protect critical infrastructure, not just healthcare related, but also buildings for education, office or production. In this project, an interdisciplinary team of experts from construction, hygiene, materials as well as building engineering would like to find measures for infection prevention from different points of view. Under the lead of the Institute of Construction Design, Industrial and Health Care Building (TU Braunschweig) members of the Institute for Hygiene and Environmental Medicine (Charité University Medicine Berlin), the Institute of Building Materials, Concrete Construction and Fire Safety (TU Braunschweig) and Hermann-Rietschel-Institute (TU Berlin) will work on these questions together. The RKI will give advisory support.

The HRI will focus on the aspects regarding ventilation and how it may help to prevent infection. The aim is to specify the effect of the different measures to reduce the risk of infection. Furthermore, the possibilities to upgrade existing ventilation systems as well as smoke extraction systems shall be evaluated. Numerical simulations as well as literature research and transfer from other projects shall be used to investigate the influencing parameters on the dispersion behavior of airborne pathogens in critical infrastructure and existing ventilation systems for the separation of different building areas will be investigated.

Funding

Associates

Project termNovember 2020 to November 2023
Funding codeSWD-10.08.18.7-20.02
Project managementYunus Emre Cetin