Research On China’s Continuity Of Operation During Earthquake Catastrophe Scenarios

In recent years, earthquake catastrophe whose destructive effect is serious often occurred, and it has resulted in infrastructure damage of the affected areas and great casualties of government officials. Moreover, government is not able to run the basic functions of disaster relief, further to amplify the influence and exacerbate the loss caused by earthquake. At present, there still exist issues including poor relief, a serious shortage of supplies and interruption of communication, especially in terms of how to ensure continuity operation of government. It’s certain that the interruption of government will affect relief efficiency and social stability. Therefore, whether government can take effective measures to keep its continuity before the occurrence of earthquake has become an important issue. However, few domestic researchers has focused on Continuity of Operation(COOP)from the open literature. So this paper analyzed China’s COOP from three aspects, that is, the impact of earthquake catastrophe on government operational process, essential functions and guarantee model of maintaining continuity. Detailed research results were listed as follows:(1)According to relevant laws and regulations including "Emergency Response Act", "National Earthquake Contingency Plan", "Earthquake Disaster Mitigation Act" and "Destructive Earthquake Emergency Regulations", combined with the operation of functions when previous earthquake catastrophe occurred in recent times, emergency functions were divided into 18 aspects. Detailed content were listed as follows, command and coordination, medical aid and wounded transfer, victims evacuation and resettlement, damage collection and report, search and rescue, personnel protection and safety appraisal, monitoring and disposal of secondary disaster, transportation and emergency deployment, logistics and resource support, repair and protection of lifeline, on-site observation and damage assessment, traffic guidance and security maintenance, announcement of news and control of public opinion, identification and dispose of corpse, acceptation and coordination of help, social mobilization and volunteer service, coordination of foreign affairs, as well as environmental cleanup and epidemic prevention. The reason why emergency functions were listed was that they could lay the foundation for choosing essential functions.(2)Based on operational process of emergency functions, this paper analyzed the impact on government caused by earthquake catastrophe from four aspects, that is, decision-making, organizing, leading and controlling.(3)According to the impact on government caused by earthquake catastrophe, combined with 18 emergency functions, this paper used the analytic hierarchy process(AHP) and Ward clustering method to select essential functions, namely, command and coordination, medical aid and wounded transfer, victims evacuation and resettlement, damage collection and report, search and rescue.(4)Based on the critical degree of essential functions, this paper divided the guaranteed sequence into two levels. Moreover, the guaranteed model was built from 6 aspects, that is, personnel, facilities, information, funds, emergency scheme and legal protection.