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. 2021 Jan 12;34(3):1063–1086. doi: 10.1007/s11424-020-9139-3

Stochastic Petri Net Based Modeling of Emergency Medical Rescue Processes during Earthquakes

Huali Sun 1, Jiaguo Liu 2,✉, Ziqiang Han 3, Juan Jiang 1
PMCID: PMC7801775  PMID: 33456273

Abstract

The post-disaster emergency medical rescue (EMR) is critical for people’s lives. This paper presents a stochastic Petri net (SPN) model based on the process of the rescue structure and a Markov chain model (MC), which is applied to the optimization of the EMR process, with the aim of identifying the key activities of EMR. An isomorphic MC model is developed for measuring and evaluating the time performance of the EMR process during earthquakes with the data of the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. This paper provides a mathematical approach to simulate the process and to evaluate the efficiency of EMR. Simultaneously, the expressions of the steady state probabilities of this system under various states are obtained based on the MC, and the variations of the probabilities are analyzed by changing the firing rates for every transition. Based on the concrete data of the event, the authors find the most time consuming and critical activities for EMR decisions. The model results show that the key activities can improve the efficiency of medical rescue, providing decision-makers with rescue strategies during the large scale earthquake.

Keywords: Earthquake disaster, emergency medical rescue, Markov chain, stochastic petri net

Footnotes

This research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China under Grant Nos. 71974121 and 71774019.

This paper was recommended for publication by Editor WANG Shouyang.

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