Simultaneous response to multiple disasters: Integrated planning for pandemics and large-scale earthquakes

Abstract

Since the beginning of COVID-19, individuals who have SARS-CoV-2 infectious have brought a heavy burden on the healthcare system. Unavoidably, along with pandemics, large-scale disas-ters, which are possibly emerging, may double the current health crisis. For a powerful disaster response plan, the health services should be prepared for the overwhelming number of disaster victims and infected individuals The proposed framework determines the appropriate number and location of temporary healthcare facilities for large-scale disasters while considering the bur-den of ongoing pandemic diseases. In this study, first, a multi-period, mix-integer mathematical model is developed to find the location and number of disaster emergency units and disaster med-ical facilities. Second, we develop an epidemic compartmental model to stimulate the negative ef-fects of the disaster on disease spread and a mixed-integer mathematical model to find optimal number and the location of pandemic hospitals and isolation centers. To validate the mathemati-cal models, a case study is conducted for a district of Istanbul, Turkey.