Growth Of Networks Research Articles

Applied Nonlinear Analysis for Efficient Communication Signal Processing and Network Management

The use of nonlinear analysis in network management and communication signal processing is a revolutionary strategy that is redefining contemporary networking paradigms. The goal of this project is to improve communication systems' resilience, efficiency, and agility by integrating cutting-edge nonlinear techniques. This study investigates the complex relationship between signal processing and network management using nonlinear analysis techniques in order to meet the growing needs of modern networks. Nonlinear approaches provide dynamic signal processing methods, enabling in-the-moment modifications that maximise data transfer under variable network circumstances. Prioritising data streams is made easier by this integration, which also improves network speed and efficiently allocates resources to guarantee Quality of Service (QoS). The study explores the complexities of interdisciplinary ideas, using the concepts of nonlinear analysis to comprehend phase transitions, emergent network architectures, and networks' inherent ability to self-organize. By deciphering the complexity of network behaviours and their evolution, this understanding aids in the creation of more effective management techniques. However, there are difficulties with computing complexity, interoperability, and skill adaption when using nonlinear analysis in network management. To properly utilise nonlinear approaches for network management and communication signal processing optimisation, these obstacles must be overcome. The research is important because it may lead to game-changing advancements in communication systems by introducing cutting-edge ways that go beyond the constraints of conventional, linear methods. The findings show potential for more effective and secure communication systems, which can meet the increasing needs of modern networking.

Supporting Preparedness and Response to Cyclone Freddy In Madagascar- A Contribution from the Social and Behaviour Change Communication

Social and Behaviour Change Communication (SBC) is one of the vital strategic programs that aim to empower people to be resilient in preparation and response to emergencies. This paper outlines steps undertaken by SBC partners in Madagascar as a contribution towards preparation and response initiatives to cyclone Freddy, and discusses observations and lessons learnt to inform future programming in the country and other cyclone-affected regions. It bases its conceptual framework around the emergency prevention, preparedness, response and recovery (PPRR), the Emergency Risk Management Framework (ERM) as well as the UNICEF Framework on Accountability to Affected Population (AAP) to define the interventions based on three major phases of the intervention i.e., before, during and after. An SMS-based survey was used as a feedback mechanism and as a tool to assess SBC interventions 3 days after the passage of cyclone Freddy. The survey used a structured questionnaire where 450 respondents participated from 13 regions of the country. Scouts (youth mobilisers) and other NGO partners in the emergency network conducted phone calls, entered data into a Kobo-Collect template and analysed the data using simple percentiles in excel sheets. Analysis of the processes and results of the survey indicated that there was adequate utilisation of systematic steps in emergency preparedness. These included strategic planning and prepositioning of communication materials in all the 23 regions of the country, coordination and partnership at national, regional and district levels, implementation of a mixture communication and engagement methods and efforts to collect and respond to feedback. Three days from the onset of Freddy, the affected people were highly exposed to life saving messages (86%) but needed more exposure to life improving messages i.e., health (29.6%), child stimulation (29.3%), WASH (29.3%), nutrition (18%), Gender-based Violence (10.2%) and Violence against Children (4%). SBC interventions showed positive results in the use of bed nets to prevent malaria (85.7%), hand washing with soap to prevent diarrheal diseases and COVID-19 (95.6%) and reporting of cases on gender-based violence and violence against children (31.6%). 50.9% of the interviewed individuals acknowledged having been well informed about humanitarian interventions.

Climate warming enhances microbial network complexity by increasing bacterial diversity and fungal interaction strength in litter decomposition

Microbial communities are important drivers of plant litter decomposition; however, the mechanisms of microbial co-occurrence networks and their network interaction dynamics in response to climate warming in wetlands remain unclear. Here, we conducted a 1.5-year warming experiment on the bacterial and fungal communities involved in litter decomposition in a typical wetland. The results showed that warming accelerated the decomposition of litter and had a greater effect on the diversity of bacteria than on that of fungi. Dominant bacterial communities, such as Bacteroidia, Alphaproteobacteria, and Actinobacteria, and dominant fungal communities, such as Leotiomycetes and Sordariomycetes, showed significant positive correlations with lignin and cellulose. Co-occurrence networks revealed that the average path length and betweenness centrality under warming conditions increased in the bacterial community but decreased in the fungal community. Both bacterial and fungal networks in the 2.0 °C warming treatment had the highest ratio of positive links (58.53 % and 98.14 %), indicating that moderate warming can promote the positive correlations and symbiotic relationships observed in the microbial community. This also suggests that small-world characteristics and weak-link advantages accelerate diffusion, and scale-free features facilitate propagation in microbial communities in response to climate warming. Logistic growth and Lotka-Volterra competition models revealed that climate warming enhances microbial network complexity mainly by increasing bacterial diversity and fungal interaction strength in litter decomposition. However, the symbiotic relationship decreased slightly under 4.0 °C warming, indicating that climate warming is a random attack rather than a targeted attack, and the microbial network has strong resistance to random attack, as shown by the highly robust dynamic performance of the microbial network in litter decomposition. Overall, the microbial community in litter decomposition responded to climate warming and shifted its network interactions, leading to further changes in emergent network topology and dynamics, thus accelerating litter decomposition in wetlands.

Towards incubators of society: researching the emergent new societal ties and networks with the methodology of the Listening Post

This article presents the results of a research carried out in four Italian cities through the Listening Post (LP) methodology. The aim of the research was to study the phenomenon of strained social ties, identify experiences of counter-movement, and explore the overt and covert dynamics. Results highlight that: (1) sociality is not traceable and understandable in the traditional frames and actions; (2) sociality needs mobilising actions that can be fed by local individual and collective resources; (3) fragmentation is not answered through the organisation of a militant action with traditional forms of social struggles; and (4) action is oriented to simple daily practice (for example, conviviality) and to the care for the spaces where one lives. From a methodological point of view, it is important to underline the usefulness of LP as a tool for inquiry in the social research at least from two perspectives. The first relates to the possibility for the researcher, to study and understand (psycho)social dynamics at a deeper level. The second perspective of usefulness of LP is that, unlike other instruments of qualitative research, it focuses on the subjectivity of participants' experience and therefore creates a space for a collective co-creation of knowledge.

Poems

Collapse carries the weight of catastrophe. But what will collapse, and for whom will it be catastrophic? With the decline of the human, other species might get the opportunity to reconfigure things—but rather than some kind of misanthropic dream, the possibilities of these emergent relations are a source of inspiration and hope. If there is a way to erode the sanctity of the human subject without plunging head-first into fantasies of annihilation and extinction, what kinds of relationships might we discover, or recover—with those who inhabit us, and with those who share our habitats? What kinds of languages would these relationships require? What kinds of poetics? My inclination is towards a relocation of the divine within these emergent networks—to reinfuse matter with spirit, yes, but also to demolish structures of transcendence. The new heaven would be fecund and sloppy as a mud flat rather than abstracted into the pure white zero of a holy moon. But as pleasing (or relieving) as this idea might be, the place to which it refers will remain distant from us while the bodies that compose our ‘us’ remain oblivious to the symbiotic co-constitutions with which they’re composed. Many cultures have developed conceptual technologies to properly articulate these enmeshments—totemist, animist materialisms which are glaringly absent from too much Western intellectual history, but which important work in the environmental humanities and elsewhere has begun to rectify.

Genetic variation in the human leukocyte antigen region confers susceptibility to Clostridioides difficile infection

Clostridioides difficile (C. diff.) infection (CDI) is a leading cause of hospital acquired diarrhea in North America and Europe and a major cause of morbidity and mortality. Known risk factors do not fully explain CDI susceptibility, and genetic susceptibility is suggested by the fact that some patients with colons that are colonized with C. diff. do not develop any infection while others develop severe or recurrent infections. To identify common genetic variants associated with CDI, we performed a genome-wide association analysis in 19,861 participants (1349 cases; 18,512 controls) from the Electronic Medical Records and Genomics (eMERGE) Network. Using logistic regression, we found strong evidence for genetic variation in the DRB locus of the MHC (HLA) II region that predisposes individuals to CDI (P > 1.0 × 10–14; OR 1.56). Altered transcriptional regulation in the HLA region may play a role in conferring susceptibility to this opportunistic enteric pathogen.

Prospective, multi-site study of healthcare utilization after actionable monogenic findings from clinical sequencing

As large-scale genomic screening becomes increasingly prevalent, understanding the influence of actionable results on healthcare utilization is key to estimating the potential long-term clinical impact. The eMERGE network sequenced individuals for actionable genes in multiple genetic conditions and returned results to individuals, providers, and the electronic health record. Differences in recommended health services (laboratory, imaging, and procedural testing) delivered within 12months of return were compared among individuals with pathogenic or likely pathogenic (P/LP) findings to matched individuals with negative findings before and after return of results. Of 16,218 adults, 477 unselected individuals were found to have a monogenic risk for arrhythmia (n= 95), breast cancer (n= 96), cardiomyopathy (n= 95), colorectal cancer (n= 105), or familial hypercholesterolemia (n= 86). Individuals with P/LP results more frequently received services after return (43.8%) compared to before return (25.6%) of results and compared to individuals with negative findings (24.9%; p<0.0001). The annual cost of qualifying healthcare services increased from an average of $162 before return to $343 after return of results among the P/LP group (p<0.0001); differences in the negative group were non-significant. The mean difference-in-differences was $149 (p<0.0001), which describes the increased cost within the P/LP group corrected for cost changes in the negative group. When stratified by individual conditions, significant cost differences were observed for arrhythmia, breast cancer, and cardiomyopathy. In conclusion, less than half of individuals received billed health services after monogenic return, which modestly increased healthcare costs for payors in the year following return.

Экологический сетевой подход в приложении к биоэтическим организационным структурам

The term ‘bioethics’ (in the narrow sense) or ‘biomedical ethics’ denotes medical ethics at the modern stage of development. Bioethics is currently institutionalized and falls under the responsibility of specialized organizational structures (bioethics commissions, ‘divine committees’, etc.). The article expounds the prospects of applying network structures to institutions and organizations dealing with bioethical issues and tasks (ethical aspects of reproductive technologies, biomedical experiments, organ transplantation, and bioethical education). With the principles of decentralization (‘multiple authority’) and ecology (an integrative approach to issues under study and integrity of a bioethical expert team), network structures promote creative and effective functioning of bioethical organizations. Nonetheless, the centralized hierarchies of traditional educational and research institutions are also expected to perform essential functions. A reasonable combination of network structures and hierarchies provides the latter with a new role: the hierarchies assess the activity of emergent network structures using competent experts and provide selective support (including financing) to the most effective among them.

Rapid Deployment Method for Multi-Scene UAV Base Stations for Disaster Emergency Communications

The collaborative deployment of multiple UAVs is a crucial issue in UAV-supported disaster emergency communication networks, as utilizing these UAVs as air base stations can greatly assist in restoring communication networks within disaster-stricken areas. In this paper, the problem of rapid deployment of randomly distributed UAVs in disaster scenarios is studied, and a distributed rapid deployment method for UAVs´ emergency communication network is proposed; this method can cover all target deployment points while maintaining connectivity and provide maximum area coverage for the emergency communication network. To reduce the deployment complexity, we decoupled the three-dimensional UAV deployment problem into two dimensions: vertical and horizontal. For this small-area deployment scenario, a small area UAVs deployment improved-Broyden–Fletcher–Goldfarb–Shanno (SAIBFGS) algorithm is proposed via improving the Iterative step size and search direction to solve the high computational complexity of the traditional Broyden–Fletcher–Goldfarb–Shanno (BFGS) algorithm. In a large area deployment scenario, aiming at the problem of the premature convergence of the standard genetic algorithm (SGA), the large-area UAVs deployment elitist strategy genetic algorithm (LAESGA) is proposed through the improvement of selection, crossover, and mutation operations. The adaptation function of connectivity and coverage is solved by using SAIBFGS and LAESGA, respectively, in the horizontal dimension to obtain the optimal UAV two-dimensional deployment coordinates. Then, the transmitting power and height of the UAV base station are dynamically adjusted according to the channel characteristics and the discrete coefficients of the ground users to be rescued in different environments, which effectively improves the power consumption efficiency of the UAV base station and increases the usage time of the UAV base station, realizing the energy-saving deployment of the UAV base station. Finally, the effectiveness of the proposed method is verified via data transmission rate simulation results in different environments.

A simple model of edit activity in Wikipedia

A simple dynamical model of collective edit activity of Wikipedia articles and their content evolution is introduced. Based on the recent empirical findings, each editor in the model is characterized by an ability to make content edit, i.e., improving the article by adding content and a tendency to make maintenance edit, i.e., dealing with formal aspects and maintaining the edit flow. In addition, each article is characterized by a level of maturity as compared to a potential quality needed to comprehensively cover its topic. This model is found to reproduce the basic structure of the bipartite network between editors and articles of Wikipedia. Furthermore, the relation between the model parameters of editors and articles and the metrics of those calculated from the emergent network turns out to be robust, i.e. depending only on the rate of the introduction of new articles to the editing activity. This results provides us a way to relate observations in the real data to the hidden characteristics of editors and articles. For the nestedness of the networks, systems with weighted parameter distribution gives better match to the empirical one. This suggests the importance of high-dimensional nature of the ability of editors and quality of articles in the real system.

Determinants of Admission to Critical Care Following Acute Recreational Drug Toxicity: A Euro-DEN Plus Study.

This study aimed to characterize patients admitted to critical care following Emergency Department (ED) presentation with acute recreational drug toxicity and to identify determinants of admission to critical care. A retrospective multicenter matched case-control study was conducted by the European Drug Emergency Network Plus (Euro-DEN Plus) over the period 2014-2021. The cases were ED presentations with acute recreational drug toxicity admitted to critical care, the controls consisted of ED presentations with acute recreational drug toxicity medically discharged directly from the ED. The potential determinants of admission to critical care were assessed through multivariable conditional stepwise logistic regression analysis and multiple imputation was used to account for the missing data. From 2014 to 2021, 3448 Euro-DEN Plus presentations involved patients admitted to critical care (76.9% males; mean age 33.2 years; SD 10.9 years). Patient age ≥35 years (as compared to ≤18 years) was a determinant of admission to critical care following acute recreational drug toxicity (adjusted odds ratio, aOR, 1.51, 95% confidence interval, CI, 1.15-1.99), along with polydrug use (aOR 1.39, 95% CI 1.22-1.59), ethanol co-ingestion (aOR 1.44, 95% CI 1.26-1.64), and the use of gamma-hydroxybutyrate/gamma-butyrolactone (GHB/GBL, aOR 3.08, 95% CI 2.66-3.57). Conversely, lower odds of admission to critical care were associated with the use of cocaine (aOR 0.85, 95% CI 0.74-0.99), cannabis (aOR 0.44, 95% CI 0.37-0.52), heroin (aOR 0.80, 95% CI 0.69-0.93), and amphetamine (aOR 0.65, 95% CI 0.54-0.78), as was the arrival to the ED during the night (8 p.m.-8 a.m., aOR 0.88, 95% CI 0.79-0.98). These findings, which deserve confirmation and further investigation, could contribute to a more complete understanding of the decision-making process underlying the admission to critical care of patients with acute recreational drug toxicity.

Changing the stroke network during pandemic scenarios does not affect the management of patients with a positive Cincinnati prehospital stroke scale.

Time plays a crucial role in the management of stroke, and changing the prehospital emergency network, altering the HUB and spoke relationship in pandemic scenarios, might have an impact on time to fibrinolysis or thrombectomy. The aim of this study was to evaluate the time-dependent stroke emergency network in Lombardy region (Italy) by comparing 2019 with 2020 and early 2021. Three parameters were investigated: (i) time of arrival of the first vehicle at the scene, (ii) overall duration of missions, and (iii) number of patients transported by emergency vehicles. Data analysis process conducted using the SAS-AREU portal (SAS Institute, USA). The number of patients with a positive CPSS was similar among the different pandemic waves. Mission duration increased from a mean time (SD) of 52.9 (16.1) min in 2019 to 64.1 (19.7) in 2020 and 55.0 (16.8) in 2021. Time to first vehicle on scene increased to 15.7 (8.4) min in 2020 and 16.0 (7.0) in 2021 compared to 2019, 13.6 (7.2) (P < 0.05). The number of hospital with available stroke units decreased from 46 in 2019 to 10 during the first pandemic wave. The pandemic forced changes in the clinical mission of many hospitals by reducing the number of stroke units. Despite this, the organization of the emergency system allowed to identify strategic hospitals and thus avoid excessive transport time. The result was an adequate time for fibrinolysis/thrombectomy, in agreement with the guidelines. Coordinated management in emergency situations makes it possible to maintain service quality standards, despite the unfavorable scenario.

Navigating collaborative governance: Network ignorance and the performative planning of South Australia's emergency management

This paper examines the roles for emergency and disaster risk management plans as policy artefacts that guide centralised governance networks. Past scholarship has been sceptical of the instrumental worth of these artefacts for informing and elaborating governance arrangements. Some suspect that such plans are purely symbolic devices, mere ‘fantasy documents’. This paper examines the role of South Australia's state emergency management plan during the Black Summer bushfires of 2019–2020. The study provides confirmation of the symbolic utility of these plans for central government, while also providing evidence for some suggested difficulties with centralised emergency management networks, about which there is still limited empirical demonstration. Drawing on focus group and interview testimony from senior actors at strategic, tactical and operational levels of South Australia's emergency network, however, we also demonstrate instrumental-heuristic worth of these plans for network actors seeking to make sense of a continually changing bureaucratic landscape, and when reflecting on the value of the network in the aftermath of extreme events.

A coordinates-based hierarchical computing framework towards spatial data processing

The vehicle-based mobile base station (VMBS) has been developed by NTT a few years ago, which plays an important role in reconstructing an emergency communication network by integrating with mobile edge computing to support the cloud service for data pre-processing tasks. Spatial data processing refers to characteristics, such as fast-changing, massive, and potentially infinite. Considering the capacities of network bandwidth and storage of VMBS, new challenging issues have emerged such as how to quantify information loss and how to optimize data processing in the paradigm of mobile edge computing. To address these two challenges, we design a coordinates-based hierarchical computing framework for spatial data processing, named HierCom. Using HierCom, the optimal position of VMBS can be selected to decrease the transmission delay, thereby reducing information loss in the data processing in an edge computing environment. Furthermore, we also propose a near least neighbor-based algorithm to optimize the information loss. Finally, simulations on the real-world dataset show that the information loss of our method is reduced by 27% compared with the baseline method.

Joint task scheduling and multi-UAV deployment for aerial computing in emergency communication networks

Joint task scheduling and multi-UAV deployment for aerial computing in emergency communication networks

Thrombolysis and thrombectomy for stroke in octogenarians and nonagenarians: A regional observational study

IntroductionElderly patients are a growing population in stroke units, characterized by higher frailty, but underrepresented in clinical trials about acute care. We investigated efficacy of intravenous thrombolysis (IVT) and mechanical thrombectomy (MT) in elderlies in current practice. MethodsWe assessed consecutive patients with acute ischemic stroke (AIS) hospitalized in the four stroke units of the French Northern Alps Emergency Network between 2015 and 2020. We compared baseline characteristics, early neurological evolution and outcome of patients aged 80–89 and≥90years old (yo). ResultsAmong 8367 patients, 2744 (32.8%) were 80–89 yo and 541 (6.5%) were≥90 yo. IVT and/or MT were performed in 787 patients≥80 yo (632 patients aged 80–89, 155 patients aged>90). Early neurological improvement was more frequent in patients≥80 yo treated by IVT and/or MT compared to untreated patients (45.6% versus 38.4%, P=0.002). After adjustment, reperfusion treatments improved likelihood of good outcome at discharge (OR=2.0 [1.6–2.7]) and reduced in-hospital mortality (OR=0.5 [0.4–0.7]). Age and initial NIHSS score were independent factors of poor functional outcome at discharge and in-hospital mortality. The rate of successful recanalization was comparable between octogenarians and nonagenarians (87% versus 85.2%, P=0.8). Octogenarians had better functional outcome at discharge compared to nonagenarians [modified Rankin scale (mRS) 0–2: 36% versus 25.7%, P=0.02], whatever IVT or MT strategy. In-hospital mortality was lower for octogenarians compared to nonagenarians (19.5% versus 27.1%, P=0.04). DiscussionIVT and MT improve early neurological recovery and functional outcome at discharge of both octogenarians and nonagenarians in current practice. Despite a poorer outcome for nonagenarians than octogenarians, these reperfusion treatments should not be withheld on the basis of age only.

Evolutionary PSO-based emergency monitoring geospatial edge service chain in the emergency communication network

ABSTRACT Emergency communication networks play a vital role in disaster monitoring, transmission, and application during disaster emergency response (DER), however, the performance and stability of edge nodes in the emergency communication networks are often weak due to limited communication and computation resources. This weakness directly affects the quality of service (QoS) of the geospatial edge service (GES) chains involved in emergency monitoring. Existing research predominantly addresses service compositions in stable environments, neglecting the aggregation of efficient and robust GES chains in emergency communication networks. This study proposes an evolutionary particle swarm optimization (EPSO)-based emergency monitoring GES chain in an emergency communication network. It includes a GES chain model of emergency environment monitoring for tailing areas, as well as the designs of the particle chromosome encoding method, fitness evaluation model, and particle chromosome swarm update operators of the EPSO-based GES chain. Finally, the study conducts emergency environment monitoring experiments for tailing areas using the proposed method. Experiments results demonstrate that the proposed method significantly enhances the efficiency, stability, and reliability of emergency monitoring GES chains in the emergency communication network. This is crucial to providing fast and reliable services for DER during natural disasters.

Decentralized Emergency Control of AC Power Grid Modes with Distributed Generation

Large-scale development of small-scale generation, and facilities based on this, with their integration into existing distribution networks, qualitatively change the modes and tasks of network management and transform previously passive electric networks into active ones. Features of parameters and modes of small-scale generation, insufficient observability and manageability in centralized management determine the need to use a decentralized multi-agent control of the modes of such networks. First of all, this applies to emergency management, which includes automatic restoration of the integrity and normal operation of the network. This paper presents a set of specialized methods for emergency management of active power grid modes and the results of a study of their effectiveness on mathematical and physical models that confirm the feasibility of using decentralized emergency management and network recovery management. In particular, this includes: a method of emergency proactively balanced separation of grid energy districts along one of the a priori fixed network cross-sections in the event of disturbances with the transition to island mode, and a method for two-stage restoration of the integrity and normal network mode with decentralized synchronization of active parts on remote network switches. In the case of the decentralized remote synchronization of active parts, it is proposed to use special control of the excitation and speed of generators to create conditions for the successful operation of automatic reclosing devices with synchronization detection. It is essential for emergency management in active networks with small generation to reject the concept of ensuring the reliability of power supply through maintaining the integrity of the network in favor of the concept of an emergency-balanced breakdown of the network into balanced areas with the subsequent automatic restoration of integrity. To conduct research on the physical model, a prototype of distributed system emergency automation has been developed that does not use data transmission tools, which ensures its high cybersecurity and the feasibility of decentralized management.

Optimizing Telematics Network Performance through Resource Virtualization in a Disruptive Environment: The Case of the IP/MPLS Core Network

We offer a security solution to considerably reduce latency in an IP network by virtualizing the IP/MPLS core network. It consists of adapting a virtualization method to a complex IP network, presenting the simulation of the implementation of this virtualization and the modifications to be made to certain aspects of the code of the solution. These modifications would take into account the key performance indicators of the network in order to guarantee its security and the transmission through very wide bands of data. To do this, we use Software Defined Network (SDN) technology. It allows us to have an emergent, scalable, dynamic, secure, laudable and adaptable network architecture, making it suitable for today&amp;#39;s high bandwidth applications and IT services. This architecture decouples network control and digital data transfer functions, making network control directly programmable and the underlying infrastructure abstracted to network applications and services. After describing the soft failover to a virtualized network, we present the new architecture that describes the separation of the control and data planes of the core of the IP/MPLS network of the Autonomous Port of Kribi (PAK) in Cameroon, as part of our research work. We will then present the aspects in which modifying the code would contribute to improving one of the key qualities of service, namely latency in the heart of the network. We go from latencies above 100 ms to latencies below 1 ms; finally we recommend the approach for a continuous modification of the code with a view to optimizing the performance of the network in a continuous process for the reduction of its latency.

Assessing the Hospitals’ Preparedness Against COVID-19: A Hybrid Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Approach

Background: COVID-19 pandemic, the different mutations of the virus, and the emergence of different variants requires that hospitals upgrade their levels of preparedness in managing the crisis. This study aims to provide a method for assessing the level of hospitals’ preparedness in dealing with such situations.&#x0D; Methods: In the initial stage, effective criteria for assessing hospital preparedness were identified through literature review. Following that, the Delphi method was used to obtain the perspectives of 40 experts from the healthcare system in order to validate the criteria. Then, the SWARA (Stepwise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis) technique was applied to determine the weights of the criteria. Through MABAC (Multi-Attributive Border Approximation Area Comparison) technique, the preparedness of 10 selected hospitals in Tehran was assessed. Finally, using sensitivity analysis, the robustness and reliability of the proposed method were examined.&#x0D; Results: Results indicated that personnel, their education and work experience, medical equipment, and the emergency networks were critical factors in determining the level of hospital preparedness against COVID-19. Out of the 10 selected hospitals, the Imam Khomeini Hospital was found to have the highest level of preparedness.&#x0D; Conclusion: This is the first study which recommends a simple and effective tool for assessing the level of preparedness through the hybrid MCDM (Multi-Criteria Decision Making) approach. This tool facilitates the proper allocation of budgets and other resources in strengthening the preparedness of hospitals in handling the situation