A modelling framework to design an evacuation support system for healthcare infrastructures in response to major flood events

Abstract

Extreme weather events such as floods are predicted to become increasingly common and severe as the climate changes. Effectively functioning hospitals are critical to a community's resilience to the adverse health impacts of such events. Yet many hospitals have not been designed with extreme weather risks in mind and are built in flood-prone areas, raising concerns about their ability to support community healthcare needs when they eventuate. While considerable research has been conducted on developing disaster responses to maintain healthcare services in the face of floods, there is a paucity of research on hospital evacuating planning. Addressing this critical gap in research, this paper explores current state-of-the-art hospital evacuation transportation models to identify key factors for developing more effective evacuation planning for future flooding risks. A new modelling framework is proposed, which addresses the limitations of existing hospital evacuation models and proposes factors that should be incorporated into future models to enhance community resilience to growing flood risks due to climate change.