Premium
Casualty Treatment after Earthquake Disasters: Development of a Regional Simulation Model
Author(s) -
Fawcett William,
Oliveira Carlos Sousa
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
disasters
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.744
H-Index - 70
eISSN - 1467-7717
pISSN - 0361-3666
DOI - 10.1111/1467-7717.00148
Subject(s) - poison control , forensic engineering , injury prevention , human factors and ergonomics , suicide prevention , occupational safety and health , medical emergency , engineering , medicine , pathology
This paper presents a new approach to the casualty treatment problem following a large‐scale disaster, based on a mathematical model of how a regional health‐care system responds to an earthquake event. The numbers and locations of casualties rescued alive, the scale of pre‐hospital care, the post‐earthquake hospital capacity, and the transport system are inputs to the model. The model simulates the movement of casualties from the stricken areas to hospitals. It predicts the number of casualties that die as well as other statistics about the health‐care system response, such as waiting time before treatment. The model can be run with varying input assumptions to simulate alternative disaster response strategies. Preliminary runs demonstrate the potential of the model as a tool for planning and training.