System Dynamics Modeling-Based Approach for Assessing Seismic Resilience of Hospitals: Methodology and a Case in China

Abstract

Hospitals play a crucial role in providing badly needed medical care after earthquakes. Meanwhile, hospitals are likely to find themselves subject to earthquake impacts and may fail to function, which highlights that there is significant need for enhancing their resilience to earthquakes. Nevertheless, effective assessment of hospital seismic resilience is lacking, which makes devising and benchmarking appropriate resilience enhancement measures challenging. This study proposes a new functionality-based assessment approach of hospital resilience to earthquakes. A new indicator of hospital functionality is proposed, and a system dynamics model of hospital functionality after earthquakes (SD-HFE) is developed to simulate hospital functionality. The resilience assessment can then be conducted based on the functionality curve, which considers both the loss and the recovery of hospital functionality. Based on a case study in China, the efficacy of the proposed approach is tested. The proposed approach advances understanding of how hospital functionality evolves after an earthquake, and allows quantitative assessment of hospital seismic resilience. The outcomes of this study will contribute to the development of informed policies and effective engineering measures to enhance the seismic resilience of hospitals.