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Hospital resilience to natural hazards: classification and performance of utilities

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journal contribution
posted on 2014-06-11, 12:30 authored by Nebil Achour, Masakatsu Miyajima, Federica Pascale, Andrew Price
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.

Funding

This research was conducted in Kanazawa University, Japan and was sponsored by the Japanese Research Councils and Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT)). EPSRC funding is also acknowledged [grant no. EP/1029788/1].

History

School

  • Architecture, Building and Civil Engineering

Published in

DISASTER PREVENTION AND MANAGEMENT

Volume

23

Issue

1

Pages

40 - 52 (13)

Citation

ACHOUR, N. ... et al, 2014. Hospital resilience to natural hazards: classification and performance of utilities. Disaster Prevention and Management, 23 (1), pp.40-52.

Publisher

© Emerald Group Publishing Ltd

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publication date

2014

Notes

This article was published in the journal Disaster Prevention and Management [© Emerald Group Publishing Ltd]. The definitive version is available at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/DPM-03-2013-0057. Research data for this paper is available on request from Nebil Achour [N.Achour@lboro.ac.uk].

ISSN

0965-3562

Language

  • en

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