Education and Healthcare Networks Resilience as a Social Stability Index

Healthcare and education systems have been identified by various national and international organizations as the main pillars of communities' stability. Understanding the correlation between these main social institutions is critical to determining the tipping point of communities following natural disasters. Despite being defined as social stability indicators, to date, no studies have been conducted to determine the level of interdependence between schools and hospitals and their collective influence on their recoveries following extreme events. In this study, we devise an agent-based model to investigate the complex interaction between healthcare and education networks while considering the communities' physical, social, and economic sectors that affect overall recovery. We employ comprehensive models to simulate the functionality processes within each facility and to optimize their recovery trajectories after earthquake occurrence. The results highlight significant interdependency between hospitals and schools including direct and indirect relationships, suggesting the need for collective coupling of their recovery to achieve full functionality of either of the two systems following natural disasters. Recognizing this high level of interdependence, we then establish a social stability index, which can be used by policymakers and community leaders to quantify the impact of healthcare and education services on community resilience and social stability.