Healthcare and Education Networks Interaction as an Indicator of Social Services Stability Following Natural Disasters

Author

Emad M. Hassan, Missouri University of Science and TechnologyFollow
Hussam Mahmoud

Abstract

Healthcare and education systems have been identified by various national and international organizations as the main pillars of communities' stability. Understanding the correlation between these main social services institutions is critical to determining the tipping point of communities following natural disasters. Despite being defined as social services stability indicators, to date, no studies have been conducted to determine the level of interdependence between schools and hospitals and their collective influence on their recoveries following extreme events. In this study, we devise an agent-based model to investigate the complex interaction between healthcare and education networks and their overall recovery, while considering other physical, social, and economic factors. We employ comprehensive models to simulate the functional processes within each facility and to optimize their recovery trajectories after earthquake occurrence. The results highlight significant interdependencies between hospitals and schools, including direct and indirect relationships, suggesting the need for collective coupling of their recovery to achieve full functionality of either of the two systems following natural disasters. Recognizing this high level of interdependence, we then establish a social services stability index, which can be used by policymakers and community leaders to quantify the impact of healthcare and education services on community resilience and social services stability.

Recommended Citation

E. M. Hassan and H. Mahmoud, "Healthcare and Education Networks Interaction as an Indicator of Social Services Stability Following Natural Disasters," Scientific Reports, vol. 11, no. 1, article no. 1664, Nature Research, Dec 2021.

The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-81130-w

Department(s)

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering

Publication Status

Open Access

Comments

National Institute of Standards and Technology, Grant None

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

2045-2322

Document Type

Article - Journal

Document Version

Final Version

File Type

text

Language(s)

English

Rights

© 2024 The Authors, All rights reserved.

Creative Commons Licensing

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Publication Date

01 Dec 2021

PubMed ID

33462303