Post-earthquake functionality and patient waiting times of fully equipped hospital critical rooms using 3D virtual reality damage scenarios

Abstract

Lately, hospital functionality has been significantly reduced or halted due to the severity of the earthquake-induced nonstructural damage in the hospital’s critical rooms. Furthermore, there is a lack of methodologies and models that realistically simulate loss of functionality. Aiming to address this knowledge gap, this research assesses the Residual Functionality (RF) and patient Waiting Times (WT) of hospital critical rooms. To this end, an Emergency Room (ER), an Intensive Care Unit (ICU), and an Operating Room (OR) are simulated at the first, fourth, and fifth levels, respectively, of a mid-rise hospital building, considering Fixed-to-the-Base (FB) and Base-Isolated (BI) support conditions. Both buildings are subjected to Service (SE), Design (DE), and Maximum Considered Earthquake (MCE) levels. Cutting-edge 3D virtual reality (3D-VR) damage scenarios of these rooms are developed from probabilistic damage scenarios considering the structural, nonstructural, and content interactions simultaneously. Next, a hybrid approach that combines the 3D-VR damage scenarios with expert elicitation is adopted to obtain physician expert judgments on RF and WT. These assessments are then used to develop RF and WT fragility curves using Monte Carlo simulations. Fragility results indicate that for the DE level and BI support condition, the ER, ICU, and OR will lose 4%, 3%, and 11% of their functionality, respectively, whereas for the FB support condition, these rooms will lose 30%, 42%, and 70% of their functionality, respectively. Additionally, under BI conditions, these rooms will experience WTs of 28, 16, and 11 minutes, respectively, while for the FB support condition, they will undergo WTs of about 2, 5, and 3 hours, respectively.