Robustness Enhancement of Healthcare Infrastructure through Intelligent Planning Units (IPUs)

摘要

The timely and coordinated functioning of critical infrastructure enables healthcare facilities to efficiently provide patients with proper care during post-disaster recovery. Specifically, to efficiently treat patients in a post-disaster situation, hospitals require sufficient medical staff, beds, medical supplies, water and electricity for treatment and building facilities, and auxiliary capacities (i.e., bottled water and backup generators) in preparation for utility disruption. Any disruption to the related infrastructure may impair the quality of patients' medical treatment. As it is not economically viable to have substantial resources reserved in case of utility disruption, healthcare facilities need to prepare strategic medical processes to adequately serve patients under utility service constraints. This research utilizes the theory of intelligent planning units (IPUs), which enhance post-disaster robustness of healthcare systems by streamlining the process for post-disaster operation. The IPUs were designed by breaking down the post-disaster operation of healthcare systems into process units at a single-patient-care level while the IPUs scale up to plan the process at a higher level (e.g., service-room-level or hospital-level). To demonstrate their application, this study explored the process of a hypothetical intensive care unit under varying conditions of utility availability. The outcome of this research is well-defined process IPUs for single-patient-care that can be replicated to optimize the process at a higher level of medical operations during ex-ante post-disaster scenarios. Further, the unavailability of utility services governs the feasible quality of medical treatment processes. This study offers guidance on how to plan auxiliary capacities to support optimal medical treatment processes in various post-disaster scenarios.