Making Our Hospitals Safer: Reducing the Seismic Risk of Nonstructural Components

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The loss of a hospital's ability to serve the public after a natural disaster can have tremendous consequences on a community striving to recover in the aftermath of the disaster. Yet, a large hospitals were rendered partly or fully inoperable in recent earthquakes in California, Chile, and New Zealand. What is remarkable about these failures is that they are typically not the result of damage to the structure itself but rather to nonstructural components (NSC). NSC include architectural components, equipment, and building contents. The 2010 Chile earthquake (M8.8) is a stark example of how damage and disruption to NSC can have a crippling effect in hospitals. Although Chile is a country that, like Canada, has an advanced seismic design code, more than 71% of all hospitals were affected by earthquake damage to NSC. Of these, four hospitals were forced to completely shut down and twelve lost 75% of their functionality. The country's Ministry of Health estimated a cost of C$3.6 billion to repair the hospital damage. Canada faces similar risk: the Cascadia subduction zone, off the coast of British Columbia, has the potential to generate a M9.0 earthquake, causing widespread devastation, including loss of functionality of hospitals and other critical facilities. ***In a hospital, equipment and other contents are usually unanchored and frequently supported on wheels and/or casters due to the need for frequent mobility. Reports from past earthquakes have highlighted excessive displacement of medical equipment on wheels/casters (EWC) or toppling of slender medical cabinets (SMC) as a major source of damage and disruption to post-disaster functionality in hospitals. However, there is a significant knowledge gap in our ability to quantify the seismic risk that EWC and SMC pose. The research program will combine innovative experimental testing, such as earthquake simulation of a full-scale replica operating room, and advanced numerical simulation to make breakthrough advances in quantifying the seismic performance of EWC and SMC. This knowledge will be integrated into a performance-based framework to assess the effect of the NSC on the system-level risk of hospitals in terms of repair time, waiting time to receive medical care, casualties, and economic losses. In addition, the research will quantify the effectiveness of seismic isolation on enhancing hospital resilience. The research will result in an unprecedented quantification and enhancement of post-earthquake hospital functionality. The developed knowledge will be mobilized through codes, standards, and public safety agencies to ensure the seismic resilience of Canada's hospitals. HQP trained through the research program will have the technical and soft skills to become leaders in the emerging field of seismic risk assessment and mitigation of NSC.