Hospital resilience to natural hazards: classification and performance of utilities

Abstract

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to: explore major and potential challenges facing healthcare facilities operation specifically those related to utility supplies; and quantify the impact of utility supplies interruption on the operation of healthcare facilities through the development of an estimation model. Design/methodology/approach – A pluralistic qualitative and quantitative research approach benefiting from an online computer program that applies the discriminant function analysis approach. Information was collected from 66 hospitals following three major earthquakes that struck northeast Japan in 2003. Findings – Analysis demonstrated that healthcare utilities face three major challenges: vulnerability of infrastructure to natural hazards; low performance of alternative sources; and lack of consideration of healthcare utility supplies in resilience codes and legislations. The study also proposed a method to estimate the impact of utility interruption of healthcare facilities. A model has been developed for the case study hospitals in Northern Japan following three major earthquakes in 2003. Practical implications – The findings are expected to raise the awareness of the critical role utilities play for the operation of healthcare facilities which will potentially lead to upgrading resilience codes and legislations. The findings are also expected to pool the literature with more information about the resilience of healthcare utility publications. Originality/value – The topic and issues discussed in this research are original based on authors’ investigations following three major earthquakes that took place in northeast Japan. The study followed a statistical approach in addressing the inter-relationship between the utility systems post disasters to develop an innovative unique index to predict the impact of utility shortage on healthcare.

Nonstructural Safety of Hospitals for Disasters: A Comparison Between Two Capital Cities

“…1 These results were consistent with previous evaluations, which found nonstructural vulnerability to be one of the main safety failures of these hospitals. 13,[24][25][26] However, further investigation is required, in which the WHO HSI can be used as an inexpensive, standardized and systematic tool with which to measure hospital safety. The application of a standardized tool allows for a comparison of hospital safety between individual hospitals on both national and international levels.…”

(Re)emphasizing Urban Infrastructure Resilience via Scoping Review and Content Analysis

“…In response, and to supplement this study's literature review findings, a conceptual diagram was created to illustrate common concepts connecting sustainable development and global change to urban infrastructure resilience (Figure 7). recent years there have been a multitude of disruptive events which re-emphasize the need to mitigate risks and to better understand the relationships between infrastructure and climate change in order to strategically cope with these hazards [54]. For specific guidance, the inverse of risk would include reducing or eliminating: inherent dangers associated with climate change and its related and increasing environmental disasters (i.e., heat, landslides, earthquakes, flooding); exposure of the human population, ecological resources, and property to climate change phenomena; and humanity's susceptibility to harm from exposure to associated environmental and social stresses that come from climate change, population and urban growth synergies.…”

A framework to evaluate the resilience of hospital networks

“…Some studies have been done about this problem. Achour et al [1] detected the effect of different factors on the level of resilience by using a questionnaire from different hospitals. The six factors that were more effective than the others are indicated by xi in relation 1 as follows: Cimellaro et al, [4] first, introduced the function parameter for a hospital.…”

“…There are not enough research in hospital network resilience field. Single hospital resilience is studied in [1], [2], [4], [7] and [8] but last research studies focus only on one hospital and there is no indicator for a multi-hospital system review taking into account the interactions of system components. This is while we know that components affect each other in a system.…”