Integrating Urban Infrastructure and Health System Impact Modeling for Disasters and Mass-Casualty Events
Abstract
Over recent decades, natural disasters and mass-casualty events in United States have repeatedly revealed the serious consequences of health care facility vulnerability and the subsequent ability to deliver care for the affected people. Advances in predictive modeling and vulnerability assessment for health care facility failure, integrated infrastructure, and extreme weather events have now enabled a more rigorous scientific approach to evaluating health care system vulnerability and assessing impacts of natural and human disasters as well as the value of specific interventions. Concurrent advances in computing capacity also allow, for the first time, full integration of these multiple individual models, along with the modeling of population behaviors and mass casualty responses during a disaster. A team of federal and academic investigators led by the National Center for Disaster Medicine and Public Health (NCDMPH) is develoing a platform for integrating extreme event forecasts, health risk/impact assessment and population simulations, critical infrastructure (electrical, water, transportation, communication) impact and response models, health care facility-specific vulnerability and failure assessments, and health system/patient flow responses. The integration of these models is intended to develop much greater understanding of critical tipping points in the vulnerability of health systems during natural and human disasters and build an evidence base for specific interventions. Development of such a modeling platform will greatly facilitate the assessment of potential concurrent or sequential catastrophic events, such as a terrorism act following a severe heat wave or hurricane. This presentation will highlight the development of this modeling platform as well as applications not just for the US health system, but also for international science-based disaster risk reduction efforts, such as the Sendai Framework and the WHO SMART hospital project.
- Publication:
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AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFMGC23F..08B
- Keywords:
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- 1626 Global climate models;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 1627 Coupled models of the climate system;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 1630 Impacts of global change;
- GLOBAL CHANGE;
- 6309 Decision making under uncertainty;
- POLICY SCIENCES