Evaluation of Hospital Pandemic Response Decisions to Design for Operational Flexibility
Publication: Computing in Civil Engineering 2023
ABSTRACT
Hospitals across the world have been significantly impacted by the novel COVID-19 pandemic, which has required incident commanders (hospital decision-makers) to make changes to the hospital such as opening and closing wards, changing screening protocols, reducing or canceling elective procedures, using temporary treatment spaces, etc. These changes impacted the relationships between the spaces within the hospitals. This study used the graph theoretical approach (GTA) optimization technique to analyze the impact of these changes during a surge event such as the COVID-19 pandemic. In particular, the study is interested in how these changes impacted the relationships between the various departments and areas within the hospital facility layout. In both cases, the layout created with surge data outperformed the layout created with normal conditions. This research provides insight into the impact of layout on operations and provides recommendations on how hospital facilities can be designed/modeled for flexibility in future surge events.
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Information
Published In
Computing in Civil Engineering 2023
Pages: 237 - 245
History
Published online: Jan 25, 2024
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Aerospace engineering
- Building design
- Buildings
- Business management
- Decision making
- Design (by type)
- Engineering fundamentals
- Epidemic and pandemic
- Facilities (by type)
- Health care facilities
- Practice and Profession
- Public administration
- Public health and safety
- Space exploration
- Structural engineering
- Structures (by type)
- Sustainable development
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