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Development of a Hospital Network Resilience Index and its Application in Enhancing Hospital Network Resilience

Hosseini Ramandi, Shiva | 2018

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 56619 (09)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Civil Engineering
  6. Advisor(s): Kashani, Hamed
  7. Abstract:
  8. The objective of this study is development of a probabilistic framework that facilitates the investigation of the post-earthquake performance of a network of hospitals using the Hospital Network Resilience index which quantifies the ability of the hospitals to provide treatment to earthquake victims. Disasters such as earthquakes can damage the infrastructure systems of a community, disrupt the functionality, and lead to various direct and indirect economic, social and socioeconomic consequences. Over a decade, natural disasters such as earthquakes are estimated to have caused $1.3 trillion economic losses. The social and socioeconomic losses of natural disasters are equally significant as these event have affected millions of people. Earthquakes are among the natural disasters that frequently affect communities across the globe. In order to reduce the negative consequences of earthquakes, the resilience of a community and its infrastructure system are needed to be enhanced. Resilience is the ability of a community to resist, absorb, and eliminate the negative consequence of a hazard and rebuild its infrastructure efficiently after its occurrence over an acceptable time. As the critical components of the healthcare system of a community, hospitals play a critical role in reducing social and socioeconomic consequences of earthquakes. Nevertheless, in many cases, hospitals are vulnerable in the face of earthquakes. Seismically vulnerable hospitals may experience damage in the face of an earthquake and become unable to respond to the surge in the demand. Over the past few years, the concept of hospital resilience has been investigated in the academic literature and several models applicable to the evaluation and quantification of hospital resilience have been developed. Nevertheless, existing models cannot be applied to the evaluation of the resilience of a network of hospitals. The probabilistic framework developed in this study is composed of multiple interconnecting probabilistic models that work together and determine the functionality of a network of hospitals. This framework incorporates various uncertainties that affect the performance of hospitals. It determines the resilience of hospitals using a novel measurement developed in this research. This study contributes to the state of knowledge by characterizing the uncertainties that affect the post-earthquake performance of a network of hospitals. Practitioners can use the proposed framework in order to assess the response of individual hospitals and the network as a whole. It can be used to evaluate the impact of mitigation policies on the overall resilience of hospital networks
  9. Keywords:
  10. Network Resiliance ; Uncertainty ; Simulation ; Infrastructure Resilience ; Hospitals Network Resilience Index (HNRI)

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