Informed Decision-Making In The Chaos Of Earthquakes - A Case Study For Hospitals
Abstract
Large earthquakes are expected to cause structural damage even in modern hospitals in full compliance with current design codes. While presumably safe, these and the much more frequent moderately sized earthquakes, can still negatively affect a hospitals' function by distressing staff and patients as well as supporting systems such as critical utilities, medical gases, and surrounding infrastructure (e.g., roads/bridges). To ensure the shelter-in-place directive during earthquakes and continue to deliver on their mission, healthcare providers must confidently make rapid decisions often with little knowledge of the actual impact on their systems and resources. Uninformed decision-making during an earthquake increases the potential for panic, injuries, and puts everyone at risk. Presented here is a solution comprised of advanced sensing technology, performance-based engineering, centralized command console tied to mobile staff check-in and live inspection tool, drawing input and knowledge from different fields (e.g., earthquake engineering, emergency management, and ICT). Implementation is illustrated with recent deployments of such system. Though focusing on hospitals because they are profoundly critical to the recovery and resilience of the communities they support and simply must remain operational unless shut down is necessary, the technology can be used in any vital structures.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2019
- Bibcode:
- 2019AGUFM.S53G0559F
- Keywords:
-
- 4341 Early warning systems;
- NATURAL HAZARDS;
- 7212 Earthquake ground motions and engineering seismology;
- SEISMOLOGY;
- 7215 Earthquake source observations;
- SEISMOLOGY