Enhancing healthcare infrastructure resilience through agent-based simulation methods

TL;DR

This paper presents an agent-based simulation model to evaluate and improve healthcare infrastructure resilience against complex threats like pandemics and cyber-attacks, enabling decision-makers to optimize resource allocation.

Contribution

It introduces a parameterizable agent-based model capturing healthcare system interdependencies, validated through a use case analyzing resilience strategies under combined threats.

Findings

Model effectively simulates healthcare system risks and interdependencies.

Simulation results identify effective resilience countermeasures.

Model demonstrates versatility in different threat scenarios.

Abstract

Critical infrastructures face demanding challenges due to natural and human-generated threats, such as pandemics, workforce shortages or cyber-attacks, which might severely compromise service quality. To improve system resilience, decision-makers would need intelligent tools for quick and efficient resource allocation. This article explores an agent-based simulation model that intends to capture a part of the complexity of critical infrastructure systems, particularly considering the interdependencies of healthcare systems with information and telecommunication systems. Such a model enables to implement a simulation-based optimization approach in which the exposure of critical systems to risks is evaluated, while comparing the mitigation effects of multiple tactical and strategical decision alternatives to enhance their resilience. The proposed model is designed to be parameterizable, to enable adapting it to risk scenarios with different severity, and it facilitates the compilation of relevant performance indicators enabling monitoring at both agent level and system level. To validate the agent-based model, a literature-supported methodology has been used to perform cross-validation, sensitivity analysis and test the usefulness of the proposed model through a use case. The use case analyzes the impact of a concurrent pandemic and a cyber-attack on a hospital and compares different resiliency-enhancing countermeasures using contingency tables. Overall, the use case illustrates the feasibility and versatility of the proposed approach to enhance resiliency.