Building Resilience Through Design: Improving Post-Earthquake Functionality of Hospitals

Hospital functionality after an earthquake is paramount for disaster response and community recovery. Resilient hospitals are able to not only withstand damage, but are able to continue to provide necessary medical care. Past earthquakes have revealed weaknesses in current standards suggesting hospitals are vulnerable and at risk of closure following a major earthquake. This dissertation examines the performance of code compliant hospitals to a major earthquake. Hospital performance is measured in terms of physical damage and the ability to provide needed medical services to the community. Further, it explores methods for improving resilience and functionality of the hospital. Methods for physically improving hospital resilience include strengthening individual nonstructural components and base isolating the structure. Resilience-based earthquake engineering is introduced as an extension of the now adopted performance-based design. This procedure adds new analysis methods that can estimate the functionality of a building at any time during the recovery period, which is needed to quantify the resilience of healthcare facilities. The results of this dissertation indicate that some code conforming hospitals could be at risk of closure following a major earthquake. Changes to the design, such as, strengthening nonstructural and structural components, help to mitigate damages and improve recovery time. However, other factors such as contractor mobilization and utility outages may also have negative impacts on hospital operability. Resilience rating systems provide a way to quantify the predicted building performance of a hospital prior to an earthquake. Each rating system provides valuable information to stakeholders on the expected outcomes. Hospitals at risk of damage and closure can use mitigation measures and rating systems to improve the predicted outcome. Finally, this dissertation addresses a method of translating research to hospital stakeholders and practicing engineers. A catastrophic hazard workshop was held in Salt Lake City, Utah to provide stakeholders with valuable resources and guidance on decision making to improve hospital functionality after a major catastrophe