title: Utilising risk analysis to predict post-earthquake functionality of critical healthcare facilities

authors: Boston, Megan

abstract: Hospitals, particularly emergency departments, are vital to a community’s resilience and earthquake recovery by providing emergent and ongoing critical care. Building standards and codes have higher structural requirements for hospital structures to help ensure continued functionality; nevertheless, hospitals are often damaged, evacuated or closed following design-level earthquakes. While post-earthquake hospital functionality has been the focus of recent research, it remains challenging to predict hospital functionality in a relevant and meaningful manner. Existing methods to quantify functionality are based on patient wait time, bed count, or available services. This work focuses on improving existing hospital functionality frameworks to predict various levels of hospital functionality using a combination of fault and event trees to provide a probabilistic prediction of different levels of functionality based on available services and bed counts for hospital emergency departments and whole hospitals. Fault and event trees were created using published data on hospital damage, evacuations, and operations following earthquakes and combined with international guidelines on hospital requirements and local hospital emergency procedures. The fault and event trees relate physical damage, staff shortages, and equipment failures to various hospital and emergency room functionality levels. Event trees provide a sequence of events (availability of critical staff, structural damage, and non-structural damage) leading to various levels of hospital functionality (full, partial, or not functional). Each event has an associated probability of occurring determined by a developed fault tree specific to that event failure. The methodology was validated using an additional hospital dataset to hindcast the functionality of the hospital facility. The hindcasted results match the published functionality data, indicating that this method provides a way to predict levels of functionality, which can indicate what types of services and space will be available for treatment following an earthquake.

text: Utilising risk analysis to predict post-earthquake functionality of critical healthcare facilities Hospitals, particularly emergency departments, are vital to a community’s resilience and earthquake recovery by providing emergent and ongoing critical care. Building standards and codes have higher structural requirements for hospital structures to help ensure continued functionality; nevertheless, hospitals are often damaged, evacuated or closed following design-level earthquakes. While post-earthquake hospital functionality has been the focus of recent research, it remains challenging to predict hospital functionality in a relevant and meaningful manner. Existing methods to quantify functionality are based on patient wait time, bed count, or available services. This work focuses on improving existing hospital functionality frameworks to predict various levels of hospital functionality using a combination of fault and event trees to provide a probabilistic prediction of different levels of functionality based on available services and bed counts for hospital emergency departments and whole hospitals. Fault and event trees were created using published data on hospital damage, evacuations, and operations following earthquakes and combined with international guidelines on hospital requirements and local hospital emergency procedures. The fault and event trees relate physical damage, staff shortages, and equipment failures to various hospital and emergency room functionality levels. Event trees provide a sequence of events (availability of critical staff, structural damage, and non-structural damage) leading to various levels of hospital functionality (full, partial, or not functional). Each event has an associated probability of occurring determined by a developed fault tree specific to that event failure. The methodology was validated using an additional hospital dataset to hindcast the functionality of the hospital facility. The hindcasted results match the published functionality data, indicating that this method provides a way to predict levels of functionality, which can indicate what types of services and space will be available for treatment following an earthquake.

year: 2024

title: Visco–resistive dissipation in transient reconnection driven by the Orszag–Tang vortex

authors: Armstrong, Craig Keith

subjects: Flares

abstract: Viscous effects are expected to significantly contribute to reconnective energy release mechanisms in solar flares. While simple scaling arguments based on head-on reconnection suggest that viscous dissipation may dominate resistive dissipation, it is not clear whether these findings can be applied in more general merging situations. Here we perform side-by-side planar reconnection simulations driven by the Orszag-Tang vortex, for both classical and Braginskii forms of the viscosity. This formulation has the advantage of providing an autonomous MHD system that develops strong current layers, sustained by large-scale vortical shearing flows. The dissipation rates are shown to follow analytically based scaling laws, which suggest that viscous losses generated from large-scale non-uniform velocity fields are likely to dominate resistive losses in current-sheet reconnection solutions.

text: Visco–resistive dissipation in transient reconnection driven by the Orszag–Tang vortex Viscous effects are expected to significantly contribute to reconnective energy release mechanisms in solar flares. While simple scaling arguments based on head-on reconnection suggest that viscous dissipation may dominate resistive dissipation, it is not clear whether these findings can be applied in more general merging situations. Here we perform side-by-side planar reconnection simulations driven by the Orszag-Tang vortex, for both classical and Braginskii forms of the viscosity. This formulation has the advantage of providing an autonomous MHD system that develops strong current layers, sustained by large-scale vortical shearing flows. The dissipation rates are shown to follow analytically based scaling laws, which suggest that viscous losses generated from large-scale non-uniform velocity fields are likely to dominate resistive losses in current-sheet reconnection solutions.

year: 2013

title: Aroha

authors: Maxwell, Te Kahautu

abstract: Waita Tira (choral), Lyrics composed by Te Kahautu Maxwell and Performed by Ōpotoki Mai Tawhiti (Kapa Haka group)

Waiata ā Tira: Aroha
Whakaeke: Pinepine Te Kura, Hau Te Kura
Mōteatea: Te Ao o Te Pārerā
Waiata ā Ringa: E pā to reo, Te Matatini, Herewini Parata
Poi: E ia e ia
Haka: Te Kōtiritiri, Te Kōtaratara
Whakawātea: Ōranga Tōiti, tōnui kōrero

text: Aroha Waita Tira (choral), Lyrics composed by Te Kahautu Maxwell and Performed by Ōpotoki Mai Tawhiti (Kapa Haka group)

Waiata ā Tira: Aroha
Whakaeke: Pinepine Te Kura, Hau Te Kura
Mōteatea: Te Ao o Te Pārerā
Waiata ā Ringa: E pā to reo, Te Matatini, Herewini Parata
Poi: E ia e ia
Haka: Te Kōtiritiri, Te Kōtaratara
Whakawātea: Ōranga Tōiti, tōnui kōrero

year: 2023-02-22