Postdisaster Recovery Planning for Interdependent Infrastructure Systems Prioritizing the Functionality of Healthcare Facilities

Abstract

Critical facilities such as hospitals rely heavily on the functioning of complex infrastructure systems to perform efficiently. After a disaster, the functionality of these facilities is impaired because the infrastructure they rely on is impacted, and the facilities will recover as the supporting infrastructure is repaired. Infrastructure recovery planning often depends on political and economic interests, which are often conflicting and can result in a delayed or inefficient recovery. When priorities are set in the planning stages, actions can be more organized and directed, resulting in a more effective recovery, especially for critical facilities. However, existing infrastructure recovery planning approaches do not provide a systematic method for prioritizing the recovery of the functionality of critical facilities. This paper presents a framework for the postdisaster recovery planning of interdependent infrastructure systems, emphasizing the recovery of healthcare facilities. In the framework, the operation of the emergency departments of the healthcare facilities is modeled using discrete-event simulation, and a new functionality metric for the facilities is developed. The performance of the supporting infrastructure systems is quantified using a connectivity-based metric considering their interdependency using a hierarchical approach. A virtual city with healthcare facilities comprising three hospitals is used to demonstrate the proposed framework focusing on the road, power, and water infrastructure of the city. Two approaches are considered to plan the recovery of the infrastructure systems. In the first approach, recovery is planned without prioritizing any of the city’s buildings or facilities. In the second approach, the hospital network is prioritized in the recovery planning. The virtual city is used to demonstrate the proposed framework considering an earthquake scenario.