Healthcare critical infrastructure stochastic interdependencies simulation model for smart cities: Flood disaster scenario

Healthcare Critical Infrastructure (HCI) is not an independent network; the operation of a healthcare facility depends on many other Critical Infrastructure (CI) networks such as electric supply CI, water supply CI, etc., forming an interdependent CI network. During a flooding disaster event, as the flood levels rise, the interdependent HCI network becomes vulnerable. A failure in one of the CI results in failure of the dependent CI. During a disaster event such as flooding, the failures propagate and cause cascading failures like a domino effect. The paper proposes an IoT based flood sensor network integrated with a stochastic Petri net interdependent healthcare critical infrastructure network simulation model. An IoT (Internet of Things) based flood water level sensor network can deliver real-Time information on the flood conditions at the various interdependent CI facilities in the interdependent network, using the Sensor Observation Services (SOS). The Stochastic Petri Net (SCPN) based interdependent Healthcare Critical Infrastructure (HCI) simulation model, is used to model and simulate the stochastic interdependencies between the interdependent HCI networks. The real-Time flood sensor network is integrated with the SCPN based interdependent HCI simulation model. The end to end system is developed in a spatiotemporal environment. This kind of an integrated simulation model will help the end-user to understand system dynamics in real-Time, visualize and predict the propagation of cascading failure scenarios in an Interdependent HCI network in a spatiotemporal environment, during a flooding scenario.