EVACUATE OR NOT—A DILEMMA OF HOSPITALS AFTER AN EARTHQUAKE AND HOW CAN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE HELP?

After a strong shaking, hospitals may face pressing challenges including whether to utilize or evacuate structures, restore interrupted operations and repair damaged facilities or equipment. Accurate information is immediately needed to make rapid and informed decisions to make staff, patients and their structure safer. 

In the aftermath of an earthquake, one of the most challenging decisions for hospitals to make is whether to evacuate patients and staff or stay in operation and admit injured people. This decision-making process is of paramount importance because damaged structures may endanger the lives of patients and staff, and liabilities may occur due to the wrong decision to utilize the hospital. Conversely, unnecessary evacuation due to the uninformed decision may create significant stress by putting patients and staff at risk. The loss of revenue arises by stopping or interrupting medical operations and services. 

Post-earthquake inspection of hospital buildings is also a time-consuming process due to the architectural and structural complexity of hospital buildings. 

In recent years, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become a hot and frontier research direction in numerous fields in science and engineering. The development of machine learning algorithms and big data has brought revolutionary changes in our lives. QuakeLogic is the only company providing cloud-based AI-powered disaster risk management solutions to prevent and reduce human and economic losses risen during and after earthquakes

Our cutting-edge technology platform performs real-time autonomous structural assessments using sensor data and sends rapid notifications after an event with the level of shaking intensity and whether structural integrity is compromised. For instance, for hospitals, we provide meaningful and easy-to-understand information immediately after an earthquake. This timely and critical information helps the hospital’s management to plan their role in making the staff, patients and their structure safer. This information also expedites post-earthquake inspections for the rapid recovery of medical operations and services.

Our mission is to ensure peace of mind for people in health care who dedicated to saving lives after disasters.