Modeling the inclusion of trapped victims in logistics planning for earthquake response: A case study in the city of Bogotá

Abstract

Discrete Event Simulation (DES) has been commonly used in modeling the medical attention of injured people. In earthquakes, a portion of the injured victims are trapped and need to be rescued before receiving medical attention. Hence, the rate of rescue operations and the percentage of victims that are rescued have an impact on the logistics planning of medical attention. In this paper we attempt to improve an existing DES model for medical attention to earthquake victims by proposing an improved way of modeling the inter-arrival rate of trapped people. We compare our results with the DES model applied to an earthquake in the city of Bogotá, Colombia and evaluate the difference of additional logistics requirements. The results show that when the percentage of dead people is below 80% there is a significant increase in the expected number of injured victims in the model, when the trapped people are properly included.