Healthcare facilities or hospital systems are classified as some of the most critical infrastructure systems when responding to natural disasters. Seismic Resilience Assessment of Hospital Infrastructure systematically presents a suite of novel techniques developed by the authors and their team for seismic resilience assessment of hospital infrastructure, with particular emphasis on seismic tests and fragility models of hospital equipment, resilience assessment of single hospital buildings and emergency departments, and post-earthquake functionality of urban hospital infrastructures. Features: Presents a state-of-the-art review on hospital resilience Develops seismic fragility model database for hospital equipment based on shaking table tests Provides a road map for effective and efficient methods necessary for assessing and improving seismic resilience of hospital systems and other critical engineering systems Expertly summarizes outcomes of many important research projects sponsored by various research agencies, including the National Natural Science Foundation of China

"Health care facilities or hospital systems are classified as some of the most critical infrastructure systems when responding to natural disasters. Seismic Resilience Assessment of Hospital Infrastructure systematically presents a suite of novel techniques developed by the authors and their team for seismic resilience assessment of hospital infrastructure, with particular emphasis on seismic tests and fragility models of hospital equipment, resilience assessment of single hospital buildings and emergency departments, and post-earthquake functionality of urban hospital infrastructures"--

The United States will certainly be subject to damaging earthquakes in the future. Some of these earthquakes will occur in highly populated and vulnerable areas. Coping with moderate earthquakes is not a reliable indicator of preparedness for a major earthquake in a populated area. The recent, disastrous, magnitude-9 earthquake that struck northern Japan demonstrates the threat that earthquakes pose. Moreover, the cascading nature of impacts-the earthquake causing a tsunami, cutting electrical power supplies, and stopping the pumps needed to cool nuclear reactors-demonstrates the potential complexity of an earthquake disaster. Such compound disasters can strike any earthquake-prone populated area. National Earthquake Resilience presents a roadmap for increasing our national resilience to earthquakes. The National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP) is the multi-agency program mandated by Congress to undertake activities to reduce the effects of future earthquakes in the United States. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)-the lead NEHRP agency-commissioned the National Research Council (NRC) to develop a roadmap for earthquake hazard and risk reduction in the United States that would be based on the goals and objectives for achieving national earthquake resilience described in the 2008 NEHRP Strategic Plan. National Earthquake Resilience does this by assessing the activities and costs that would be required for the nation to achieve earthquake resilience in 20 years. National Earthquake Resilience interprets resilience broadly to incorporate engineering/science (physical), social/economic (behavioral), and institutional (governing) dimensions. Resilience encompasses both pre-disaster preparedness activities and post-disaster response. In combination, these will enhance the robustness of communities in all earthquake-vulnerable regions of our nation so that they can function adequately following damaging earthquakes. While National Earthquake Resilience is written primarily for the NEHRP, it also speaks to a broader audience of policy makers, earth scientists, and emergency managers.

Since the publication of the successful first edition of Earthquake Protection there have been 110 lethal earthquakes, killing 130 000 people; there have also been significant developments in the field of earthquake risk management, particularly in the modelling and analysis of risk for insurance and financial services. Furthermore, major earthquake disasters, such as the 1994 Northridge earthquake in California, the 1995 Kobe earthquake in Japan and the 1999 Kocaeli earthquake in Turkey have occurred. The experience and knowledge gained through these events have improved our understanding of how to manage, mitigate and work towards the prevention of similar catastrophes. The 1990s were in fact the costliest decade on record in terms of disaster management due to such seismic events, placing unprecedented pressure on the insurance industry in particular, and changing its view of earthquake protection. Significantly revised and updated, this second edition continues to provide a comprehensive overview of how to reduce the impact of earthquakes on people and property, and implement best practice in managing the consequences of such disasters. It also includes significant coverage of the techniques of modelling earthquake catastrophe. Each chapter deals with a separate aspect of protection, and covers a wide range of economic and social conditions, drawing on the authors' considerable personal experience and with reference to real life examples. Key features include: Recent event coverage Modern developments in the theory and practice of planning and engineering loss estimation techniques, along with new engineering techniques such as microzonation and hazard-mapping Historic buildings experience An entirely new chapter on 'Earthquakes and Finance' This valuable book provides essential reading for earthquake and structural engineers and geoscientists, as well as insurers and loss prevention specialists, risk managers and assessors involved in managing earthquake risk, urban and regional planners, and emergency management agencies.

This guide provides a step-by-step explanation of how to use the Safe Hospitals Checklist, and how the evaluation can be used to obtain a rating of the structural and nonstructural safety, and the emergency and disaster management capacity, of the hospital. The results of the evaluation enable hospital's own safety index to be calculated. The Hospital Safety Index tool may be applied to individual hospitals or to many hospitals in a public or private hospital network, or in an administrative or geographical area. In some countries, such as Moldova, all government hospitals have been evaluated using the Hospital Safety Index. In this respect, the Hospital Safety Index provides a useful method of comparing the relative safety of hospitals across a country or region, showing which hospitals need investment of resources to improve the functioning of the health system. The purpose of this Guide for Evaluators is to provide guidance to evaluators on applying the checklist, rating a hospital's safety and calculating the hospital's safety index. The evaluation will facilitate the determination of the hospital's capacity to continue providing services following an adverse event, and will guide the actions necessary to increase the hospital's safety and preparedness for response and recovery in case of emergencies and disasters. Throughout this document, the terms "safe" or "safety" cover structural and nonstructural safety and the emergency and disaster management capacity of the hospital. The Hospital Safety Index is a tool that is used to assess hospitals' safety and vulnerabilities, make recommendations on necessary actions, and promote low-cost/high-impact measures for improving safety and strengthening emergency preparedness. The evaluation provides direction on how to optimize the available resources to increase safety and ensure the functioning of hospitals in emergencies and disasters. The results of the evaluation will assist hospital managers and staff, as well as health system managers and decision-makers in other relevant ministries or organizations in prioritizing and allocating limited resources to strengthen the safety of hospitals in a complex network of health services. It is a tool to guide national authorities and international cooperation partners in their planning and resource allocation to support improvement of hospital safety and delivery of health services after emergencies and disasters. Over the past three years, the expert advice of policy-makers and practitioners from disciplines, such as engineering, architecture and emergency medicine, has been compiled, reviewed and incorporated into this second edition of the Guide. Global and regional workshops and virtual consultations have enabled technical and policy experts to contribute to the revision of Hospital Safety Index until consensus was reached on the content for its publication and distribution. Further comments and observations are certain to arise as the Hospital Safety Index continues to be applied across the world and these experiences will enable us to improve future editions. The rapid diagnostic application of the Hospital Safety Index provides, as a comparison, an out-of-focus snapshot of a hospital: it shows enough of the basic features to allow evaluators to confirm or disprove the presence of genuine risks to the safety of the hospital, and the hospital's level of preparedness for the emergencies and disasters to which it will be expected to provide health services in the emergency response. The Hospital Safety Index also takes into account the hospital's environment and the health services network to which it belongs. This second version of the second edition was released in December 2016.

Security protections for critical infrastructure nodes are intended to minimize the risks resulting from an initiating event, whether it is an intentional malevolent act or a natural hazard. With an emphasis on protecting an infrastructure's ability to perform its mission or function, Critical Infrastructure System Security and Resiliency presents a practical methodology for developing an effective protection system that can either prevent undesired events or mitigate the consequences of such events. Developed at Sandia National Labs, the authors’ analytical approach and methodology enables decision-makers and security experts to perform and utilize risk assessments in a manner that extends beyond the theoretical to practical application. These protocols leverage expertise in modeling dependencies—optimizing system resiliency for effective physical protection system design and consequence mitigation. The book begins by focusing on the design of protection strategies to enhance the robustness of the infrastructure components. The authors present risk assessment tools and necessary metrics to offer guidance to decision-makers in applying sometimes limited resources to reduce risk and ensure operational resiliency. Our critical infrastructure is vast and made up of many component parts. In many cases, it may not be practical or affordable to secure every infrastructure node. For years, experts—as a part of the risk assessment process—have tried to better identify and distinguish higher from lower risks through risk segmentation. In the second section of the book, the authors present examples to distinguish between high and low risks and corresponding protection measures. In some cases, protection measures do not prevent undesired events from occurring. In others, protection of all infrastructure components is not feasible. As such, this section describes how to evaluate and design resilience in these unique scenarios to manage costs while most effectively ensuring infrastructure system protection. With insight from the authors’ decades of experience, this book provides a high-level, practical analytical framework that public and private sector owners and operators of critical infrastructure can use to better understand and evaluate infrastructure security strategies and policies. Strengthening the entire homeland security enterprise, the book presents a significant contribution to the science of critical infrastructure protection and resilience.

Introductory technical guidance for civil, geotechnical and structural engineers interested in earthquake hazard analysis. Here is what is discussed: 1. OVERVIEW OF PROBABILISTIC SEISMIC HAZARD ANALYSIS (PSHA) METHODOLOGY 2. CHARACTERIZING SEISMIC SOURCES FOR PSHA 3. GROUND MOTION ATTENUATION CHARACTERIZATION FOR PSHA 4. TREATMENT OF SCIENTIFIC UNCERTAINTY IN PSHA 5. DEVELOPMENT OF SITE-SPECIFIC RESPONSE SPECTRA FROM PSHA 6. DEVELOPMENT OF ACCELEROGRAMS 7. SUMMARY OF STRENGTHS AND LIMITATIONS OF DSHA AND PSHA.