Perennial Disaster Patterns in Central Europe since 2000: Implications for Hospital Preparedness Planning - A cross sectional Analysis

IntroductionHospitals are vital components of a countrys critical infrastructure, essential for maintaining resilient public services. Emergency planning for hospitals is crucial to ensure their functionality under special circumstances. The impact of climate change and seasonal variations in the utilization of hospital services further complicate emergency planning. Therefore, the knowledge of perennial disaster patterns could help strengthening the resilience of health care facilities. MethodsWe conducted a cross-sectional analysis of the Emergency Events Database EM-DAT for disasters in Central Europe between January 2000 and December 2023 (defined as Germany and bordering countries). Primary endpoint was the average month of occurrence of disasters across the overall study period. ResultsOut of 474 events, 83% were associated with a natural cause and only 80 events (=17%) were technological. More than 50 % of the technological disasters were categorized in the transport accident subgroup. Technological disasters were spread equally over the whole year. The vast majority of natural disasters (N=394) were due to storm (n=178, 45%), flood (n=101, 26%) and extreme temperatures (n=93, 24%) with peaks occurring during summer and winter months, while less disasters were registered during autumn and especially spring seasons. DiscussionLooking at the three most common disaster types, extreme temperatures, floods, and storms are clearly dominating and cause over 90% of the natural disasters in central Europe. An overlap of hospital admissions due to seasonal effects and catastrophic events, mainly triggered by natural disasters in the vulnerable periods may lead to a partial collapse of the health care system. To deal with such a variety of different and potentially simultaneous hazards using an "all hazards" approach could be promising and often has been seen as the most effective strategy for hospital emergency planning.