Decision Support System for Fast Provision of Healthcare Facilities in Response to COVID-19 Pandemic Outbreak

ABSTRACT

The Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) rapid spread across the world has unfortunately led to huge number of fatalities and large number of cases overflowing the capacity of health care facilities (HCF) causing a global public health issue. This health crisis has gotten worse with the new corona virus variant, which transmits even faster leading to critical shortage in hospital care beds and ventilators. To address this shortage, efforts are directed towards the fast construction of HCFs or conversion of non-medical facilities into temporary medical ones. However, there is a lack of structured support systems behind the decisions made. Disaster management has recently been growing in importance. It mainly addresses humanitarian logistics and emergency responses in case of disasters using various methodologies including operation research approaches. However, it did not tackle yet the emergency cases of pandemics and outbreaks. Accordingly, this paper presents the framework for a decision support system (DSS) that would help arrive at the best decision for fast provision HCFs in a timely and cost-effective manner amid health crises. The DSS consists of two modules (1) first module determines the optimum structural system for fast construction of new HCFs considering the construction cost and duration and the associated life cycle costs, and (2) the second module determines the optimum selection of candidate non-medical facilities that can be converted into temporary HCFs considering multiple attributes. The proposed DSS will help policy makers respond quickly to pandemic crises and confine its disastrous impact on the society. © 2023, Canadian Society for Civil Engineering.