PUBLIC HEALTH MANAGEMENT FACING DISASTER RESPONSE: A BUSINESS PROCESS SIMULATION PERSPECTIVE

This paper focuses on process analysis and computational simulation to address public health management in case of disaster response. By adopting a Business Process Management perspective, we perform organization modeling and analysis as a management tool by comparing results from agent-based and discrete event simulations. We focus on the consequences of a mass tragedy, exploiting real data from an Emergency Department after a crowd disaster where people were stamped as a consequence of mass panic. Our models consider activities with corresponding durations, resources as well as patients arrivals based on real data. Finally, once models were validated by managers, simulations can be used to provide suggestions as well as to propose different set of responses to disaster stress in emergency management.