Assessments of the Effectiveness of an Earthquake Emergency Plan Implementation with Hesitant Analytic Hierarchy Process

Abstract

Numerous earthquakes occur throughout the world, and thus, earthquake emergency plan is a significant issue that concerns everyone in the affected areas. However, the absence of an effective, scientific assessments system may lead to a lack of awareness about the effectiveness and comprehensiveness of earthquake emergency plan implementation. This delays the construction of emergency plan and leads to low operational efficiency. In order to improve this situation, this paper aims to efficiently assess the earthquake emergency plan implementation to accelerate the replenishment and the amendment of the earthquake emergency plan. Firstly, we review the existing researches on the earthquake emergency system and some guidelines and plans of earthquake emergency. Secondly, we carefully conduct 30 indicators to assess the effectiveness of earthquake emergency plan implementation in terms of operational mechanism, emergency response, and emergency safeguards. Thirdly, according to the characteristic information obtained from the effectiveness assessments of earthquake emergency plan implementation, and based on the advantages of hesitant fuzzy elements for expressing information, we develop a method for the effectiveness assessments of earthquake emergency plan implementation using hesitant analytic hierarchy process (HAHP). Furthermore, we apply the method to assess the Wenchuan, Yushu and Lushan earthquakes, and also compare our method with the analytic hierarchy process. Based on our analysis, we conclude that the HAHP is highly suitable for assessments of earthquake emergency plan implementation’s effectiveness.