Resilience of healthcare and education networks and their interactions following major earthquakes
Date
2021
Authors
Hassan, Emad Mohamed Shafik, author
Mahmoud, Hussam N., advisor
Ellingwood, Bruce R., committee member
van de Lindt, John W., committee member
Zahran, Sammy, committee member
McCabe, Steven, committee member
Cerato, Amy, committee member
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Abstract
Healthcare and education systems have been identified by various national and international organizations as the main pillars of communities' stability. Ensuring the continuation of vital community services such as healthcare and education is critical for minimizing social losses after extreme events. A shortage of healthcare services could have catastrophic short-term and long-term effects on a community including an increase in morbidity and mortality, as well as population outmigration. Moreover, a shortage or lack of facilities for K-12 education, including elementary, middle, and high schools could impact a wide range of the community's population and could lead to impact population outmigration. Despite their importance to communities, there are a lack of comprehensive models that can be used to quantify recovery of functionalities of healthcare systems and schools following natural disasters. In addition to capturing the recovery of functionality, understanding the correlation between these main social services institutions is critical to determining the welfare of communities following natural disasters. Although hospitals and schools are key indicators of the stability of community social services, no studies to date have been conducted to determine the level of interdependence between hospitals and schools and their collective influence on their recoveries following extreme events. In this study, comprehensive frameworks are devised for estimating the losses, functionality, and recovery of healthcare and educational services following earthquakes. Success trees and semi-Markov stochastic models coupled with dynamic optimization are used to develop socio-technical models that describe functionalities and restorations of the facilities providing these services, by integrating the physical infrastructure, the supplies, and the people who operate and use these facilities. New frameworks are proposed to simulate processes such as patient demand on hospitals, hospitals' interaction, student enrollment, and school administration as well as different decisions and mitigation strategies applied by hospitals and schools while considering the disturbance imposed by earthquake events on these processes. The complex interaction between healthcare and education networks is captured using a new agent-based model which has been developed in the context of the communities' physical, social, and economic sectors that affect overall recovery. This model is employed to simulate the functional processes within each facility while optimizing their recovery trajectories after earthquake occurrence. The results highlight significant interdependencies between hospitals and schools, including direct and indirect relationships, suggesting the need for collective coupling of their recovery to achieve full functionality of either of the two systems following natural disasters. Recognizing this high level of interdependence, a social services stability index is then established which can be used by policymakers and community leaders to quantify the impact of healthcare and educational services on community resilience and social services stability.
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Rights Access
Subject
education
interdependency
resilience
healthcare
earthquake
networks