Master of Philosophy (M.Phil.)http://dl.lib.uom.lk/handle/123/187202024-03-28T15:08:56Z2024-03-28T15:08:56ZQuantitative approach to hospital resilience based on system dynamics : case of Sri LankaJayasekara JHPRUhttp://dl.lib.uom.lk/handle/123/222042024-02-08T22:07:20Z2023-01-01T00:00:00ZQuantitative approach to hospital resilience based on system dynamics : case of Sri Lanka
Jayasekara JHPRU
Past records depict that both the intensity and frequency of climatic-related hazards are
increasing devastatingly. Although the number of deaths caused by these extreme events
has been comparatively less recently, the economic losses have increased considerably.
The complexity of the world with interconnected infrastructure systems has been the main
catalyst of these huge losses. COVID-19 and concurrent hazards have set out a perfect
example that shows hazards no longer affect discreet parts of the system but render the
failure of the whole system. Out of critical infrastructure sectors, damages on health
systems have attracted global concern more as the impacts on the health sector can cascade
further to socio-economic aspects as well. Therefore, currently, health is considered an
important part of disaster risk reduction. Sri Lanka, as a tropical country, experiences
climatic-related hazards more frequently. Although Sri Lanka has a disaster management
mechanism and public health system, a limited number of evidence exists on integrated
systemic risk management mechanisms in the country. Most of the existing emergency
and disaster management mechanisms have a hazard-by-hazard approach and fail to
incorporate synergized impacts of compound hazard events. The levels of integration of
public health and disaster risk management aspects into each other still needs to be
enhanced. In a context where systems thinking approaches are more promoted in disaster
resilience, this study aims at providing a framework for assessing the public health system
disaster resilience for multi-hazard contexts amidst biological hazards. In this regard, this
study has followed multiple steps to evaluate the existing health disaster management
approaches in the country. Initially, a desk study was conducted to identify key drivers of
effective response mechanisms for pandemics, which can affect the capacities of
integrated disaster risk management approaches. It was followed by a stakeholder
analysis, which used Social Network Analysis (SNA) to identify the stakeholder
behaviour in the country for multi-hazard preparedness planning. Furthermore, field data
collection was conducted under three phases, including forty-one key informants
representing the sectors that are related to disaster management in the country. Qualitative
information from this step was analysed using systems thinking and cascading effects
were modelled for early warnings, evacuation, shelter management, and hospital
functionality. Since functional continuity of healthcare facilities was identified as a key
driver of multi-hazard preparedness and response mechanisms, this study presents a model
that captures interdependencies within a hospital during a hybrid hazard scenario. As the
final outcome, the study presents a framework for enhancing public health systems
resilience for multi-hazard contexts. The developed framework was tested for its
applicability at the community level in Sri Lanka, through scenario workshops. Along
with these outcomes, the study further presents a set of gaps that needs to be immediately
addressed based on lessons from recent multi-hazard scenarios amidst the COVID-19
outbreak in Sri Lanka
2023-01-01T00:00:00ZDevelopment of a methodology to evaluate safety performance in low volume roadsRanawaka RKTKhttp://dl.lib.uom.lk/handle/123/213812023-10-13T01:32:27Z2022-01-01T00:00:00ZDevelopment of a methodology to evaluate safety performance in low volume roads
Ranawaka RKTK
Road safety is a vital element of the road's overall function, which is often neglected in
decision-making for road maintenance management. As a result, the safety issues,
especially in rural roads, remain without funding to implement the necessary
countermeasures. One constraint faced by local authorities is the lack of analysis tools to
select appropriate safety treatments within the available budget.
Low-volume roads provide connectivity between residential/commercial areas and the
national road network. They are especially critical in rural areas to provide accessibility
to the community for social and economic needs. Low volume roads account for nearly
61% of the road network length in Sri Lanka. With the rapid motorization taking place in
Sri Lanka, it is expected that traffic on these roads will increase significantly in the future.
However, some of these roads have not been developed according to the standard design
guidelines and raise major safety issues on such roads as a result. Considering the expected
growth in traffic and prevailing issues concerning roadway design, the safety level
decrease in these roads raises risk to the road user. Therefore, it is essential to evaluate the
safety performance of low volume roads. Existing safety evaluation methodologies rely
on traffic data, and accident statistics, which may not be readily available for the low
volume road network. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a non-subjective methodology
to evaluate the safety performance of low-volume roads, considering the data limitations
present in developing countries. This study analyses the main casual factors of low volume
road accidents and a novel approach, i.e., Cumulative Safety Index: CSI, designed to
evaluate the safety performance of low volume roads considering the data limitations
present in developing countries.
This study also proposes a methodology to incorporate road safety performance in rural
roads in maintenance planning using a multi-objective optimization approach. Road safety
performance is defined in terms of the CSI, which is computed based on the severity,
exposure, frequency of safety issues that road safety audits have identified. The safety
performance and pavement condition-related indices, such as International Roughness
Index: IRI, pothole number, etc., are included in the Multi-Objective Optimization: MOO
decision criteria analysis. It comprises two objectives: minimize network IRI, and
minimize network CSI. Applicability of the developed model has been demonstrated from
the illustrative example of a rural road network. Results have shown that roads with safetyissues can also be prioritized in budget allocation while ensuring the network-level
pavement condition can be maintained at a reasonable level. This methodology offers a
simplified approach to incorporate road safety issues in rural road maintenance planning.
This study presents a methodology to logically determine the safety treatment criteria for
a selected road to increase the safety performance at the project level. The safety
treatments are taken based on a linear programming model that optimizes the safety
performance of the selected road. CSI represents the safety performance of the road, which
is determined based on the prevailing issues on that road. The model comprises the
objective function that maximizes the safety performance of the selected road concerning
the number of prevailing safety issue types. This model is used to identify the optimal
safety treatment scheme for the road chosen, ensuring prevailing road safety issues are
effectively addressed. The objective function consists of the Initial CSI of the selected
road and the safety improvement after treating relevant issue type coupled with a binary
decision variable.
2022-01-01T00:00:00ZStabilization of soil with plastic waste and leaf ashYathushan Vhttp://dl.lib.uom.lk/handle/123/213802023-10-13T01:12:54Z2022-01-01T00:00:00ZStabilization of soil with plastic waste and leaf ash
Yathushan V
This study aims to investigate the stabilization of three sandy soils with the addition of waste
plastics, Bamboo Leaf ash (BLA), Banana Leaf ash (BALA) and a leaf ash mixture based on
the enhancement in the MDD (Maximum Dry Density), OMC (Optimum Moisture Content),
Soaked CBR (California Bearing Ratio), Shear strength parameters and Atterberg Limits. The
soil stabilizers used in the study are the plastics strips from waste plastic file folders, BALA,
BLA and a pozzolanic leaf ash mixture of five commonly available pozzolanic leaves in Sri
Lanka. Plastics used in the study have 5 mm width and Aspect Ratios (ARs) of 1, 2, 3, and 4
in the weight percentages 0.5, 1, 2, 4, and 8. BALA, BLA and the leaf ash mixture used in the
study are in the weight percentages 2, 4, 6, 8, and 10. The most significant improvement in
MDD was achieved when 2 % of plastics with an AR 02 was mixed with soil 01. For soil 02,
the best improvements in MDD with almost similar values were observed with the addition of
6 % of all the considered ashes. For soil 03, the best improvements in MDD with almost similar
values were achieved with the addition of 6 % of BLA and the leaf ash mixture. The optimum
improvement in soaked CBR for each soil was around (2-3) times compared to the virgin state.
The optimum improvement in soaked CBR was observed with the addition of 6 % of BLA for
all three soils. Shear strength parameters improved in almost all cases of the addition of plastics
and ashes. A reduction of plasticity index (PI) was noted on all three soils with the addition of
2, 4 and 6 % of ashes. Soil 03 mixed with 2 % plastics of AR 03, 8 % BALA, 6 % BLA and 6
% mixture of pozzolanic ashes showed satisfactory results to be used for the upper subbase
layer in flexible pavement constructions in Sri Lanka.
2022-01-01T00:00:00ZAssessment of structural vulnerability of Sri Lankan hospitals under natural hazards – Tsunami as a case studyHasalanka HHHhttp://dl.lib.uom.lk/handle/123/213622023-10-13T00:48:16Z2021-01-01T00:00:00ZAssessment of structural vulnerability of Sri Lankan hospitals under natural hazards – Tsunami as a case study
Hasalanka HHH
Hospitals are considered critical service units of a society that need to operate before,
during, and after disasters. The Ministry of Health of Sri Lanka has embraced the “Safe
Hospitals” Initiative promoted by the World Health Organization (WHO), as a
strategic priority for health sector Disaster Management to strengthen the resilience of
the hospitals. WHO has developed a toolkit for the assessment of the safety of hospitals
including structural, non-structural, and functional aspects. This toolkit consists of four
modules that are; hazard identification, structural safety, non – structural safety, and
emergency and disaster management. A review of this toolkit has pointed out the need
for major alterations to the structural safety module of the Safe Hospital Toolkit to Sri
Lanka since the Sri Lankan disaster profile is quite different from that of the Latin
American countries in which the toolkit was developed; where earthquakes and
cyclones are predominate. The objective of this assessment was to develop a toolkit to
assess the structural safety of hospitals in Sri Lanka addressing the structural
vulnerability/robustness of buildings considering natural hazards; high winds, floods,
tsunamis, and landslides. Accordingly, a draft Structural Safety of Hospitals
assessment Sri Lanka (draft SSH – SL) has been developed based on the Safe Hospital
Toolkit and the available Sri Lankan guidelines for hazard resilient constructions.
Then, the draft SSH – SL has been used in a pilot study to identify its limitations, on
two hospitals based on their functionality, namely the District General Hospital
Gampaha and the Teaching Hospital, Kegalle. To further develop the SSH - SL, field
data of another pilot study conducted on six hospitals on the southern coast are used
along with a thorough literature review. Moreover, expert surveys were conducted to
further improve the toolkit and to obtain the weights using the Analytical Hierarchy
Process (AHP), for all the criteria in the SSH – SL, and a Structural Robustness Index
(SRI) is defined. Finally, the developed tool under tsunamis is checked for
applicability based on the data obtained from the second pilot study and is validated
by comparing the actual damage occurred in 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami with the
obtained SRI scores. However, the developed tool for other assessments require
validation through more case studies. According to the relative weights obtained
through AHP, two main attributes; construction material and the foundation system were found to be significantly important. The assessments of tsunamis and floods share
the same building attributes with different weights; the attributes of the lateral load
resisting system and the number of stories get a higher weight under the tsunamis
compared to floods, as the impact loads applied by the tsunamis are higher than that
of the floods. Considering the SRI scores, it was found that the median score for the
general assessment is 3 whereas it is 2.33 for all the other assessments. This gives a
clear idea of the robustness of buildings as the SRIs above the median score are tend
to be robust and the SRIs below the median tend to be vulnerable. The case study
carried out focussing on the assessment developed for tsunamis suggests that the
Structural Robustness Index (SRI) method is a more nuanced and improved method
for assessing the structural robustness compared to the PTVA method. It is highlighted
that the SRI method identifies structures that are above the median level in terms of
structural robustness than that of the PTVA method. As far as the intra-hospital
variation is concerned, the SRI variation mostly depends on the building attributes
such as the number of storeys and the construction material. It is also identified that
there is a coupling effect between building attributes such as the construction material
and the number of storeys as the buildings with a higher number of storeys are also
tend to be made of reinforced concrete frames whereas the single storey buildings are
made of masonry. The inter-hospital variation of SRIs mostly depends on the
surrounding attributes as they change with the geographical location. These results are
valid for the buildings up to four storeys including unreinforced masonry, reinforced
concrete structures with masonry infills, and reinforced concrete framed structures that
were assessed during the field survey. The SSH - SL could be further improved by
incorporating the level of exposure and functional attributes and emergency and
disaster management attributes to develop a comprehensive risk index, which is
beneficial for the disaster management decision-making stage of hospitals.
2021-01-01T00:00:00Z