Choosing flying hospitals in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic: structuring and modeling a complex problem using the VFT and ELECTRE-MOr methods

The increase in the number of cases of the new coronavirus has threatened the capacity of health systems worldwide, with several states declaring the collapse of the hospital system. In order to find a way to support Brazil in the fight against the pandemic, this article used the Value-Focused Thinking (VFT) and ELECTRE-MOr methods to select the most suitable hospital aircraft to be acquired by the Brazilian government. The airplanes would be used in aeromedical evacuations, supporting the fight against the pandemic, especially in regions where there are no more ICU beds available, transporting patients to other locations with greater structure, technological and technical experience. To this end, six models manufactured by Embraer, employed in aeromedical evacuations, were evaluated in the light of operational, technical and commercial criteria. This paper aims to solve a problem of extreme relevance to academia and society, as it proposes the application of a new Multi-Criteria Decision Support (MCDS) method to contribute to the solution of a problem that affects millions of people in Brazil and worldwide. After the application of the methods, Legacy 450 and Praetor 500 aircrafts were chosen as the most indicated to be acquired by the Government and used as hospital aircrafts in the fight against the pandemic.