Research On The Performance Evaluation Of The Emergency Networks For Public Health Emergencies

Public Health Emergency(PHE)has a significant negative impact on the safety of human life,economic growth of cities,and the normal order of society.Interorganizational emergency response has become an inevitable choice to respond to public health emergency.In this process,“network” emerged and gradually developed,it can quickly mobilize various resources,coordinate multiple forces,and play an important role in complex situations.Emergency network can be divided into planned and actual network and there are differences between them because of the complexity of the emergency situations.Therefore,the performance evaluation of the emergency network for public health emergency is crucial.In this paper,the SARS in 2003,the H1N1 in 2009 and the COVID-19 in 2020 were selected,with Beijing,Shanghai and Wuhan as the representative cities for emergency response,respectively.The performance of the emergency network for public health emergencies is evaluated by comparing the planned network with the actual network in three dimensions: network nodes,network relationships and network structure.Then,this paper analyzed the performance of emergency networks at different stages,summarized common problems,and discussed the paths to improve the performance of emergency networks.The results are as follows.First,the core and edge nodes in the actual networks of public health emergencies are inconsistent with the planned networks.In the actual networks,governmental nodes occupy the core positions,and many informal participants not recognized by the formal system,such as nonprofit organizations,enterprises and other emergency organizations,have been involved in emergency response,but most of them are at the edge of the network.Second,the relationships among organizations in the actual networks for public health emergencies are different from the planned networks.The size of the actual network is larger and there are more links between organizations.However,the links in the emergency networks are mainly concentrated among governmental organizations,and there are insufficient links among non-governmental organizations and cross-organizations.Finally,the density and cohesion of the actual networks for public health emergencies are low,and the average path of the network is long.Meanwhile,the cohesive subgroups in the emergency networks are influenced by attributes.Governmental nodes appeared in different cohesive subgroups many times,forming strong cohesive subgroups.However,non-profit nodes,corporate nodes and other non-governmental nodes have not yet formed independent cohesive subgroups.The following recommendations are proposed.First,in order to improve the performance of the emergency network,it is necessary to increase the heterogeneity of core nodes,prompt more nodes of different types to become core nodes,improve the participation of edge nodes and enhance the interaction ability of semi-isolated nodes.Secondly,it is significant to increase the intensity of horizontal connections among governmental nodes,build a platform for connections among nongovernmental nodes and broaden the connection channels among different nodes.In addition,it is recommended to optimize the public health emergency network from two perspectives: the overall structure of the network and the internal sub-structure of the network,so as to change the current situation of loose actions and lack of coordination among nodes in the emergency network.