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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Public Health
Sec. Disaster and Emergency Medicine
Volume 13 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fpubh.2025.1489904
This article is part of the Research Topic Innovative Strategies for Urban Public Health Resilience in Crisis Situations View all articles

Scenario Construction and Evolutionary Analysis of Nonconventional Public Health Emergencies Based on Bayesian Networks

Provisionally accepted
Yutao Zhu Yutao Zhu 1Qing Yang Qing Yang 2*Lingmei Fu Lingmei Fu 3chun Cai chun Cai 4*Jinmei Wang Jinmei Wang 2*Ling He Ling He 5*
  • 1 School of Management, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China
  • 2 School of Safety Science and Emergency Management, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China
  • 3 College of Emergency Management, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China
  • 4 School of Automotive Engineering, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China
  • 5 School of Management, Wuhan Institute of Technology, Wuhan, Hubei Province, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    The objective was to aggregate the various scenarios that occur during nonconventional public health emergencies (NCPHEs) and analyze the evolutionary patterns of NCPHEs to better avoid risks and reduce social impacts. The aim was to enhance strategies for handling NCPHEs.News reports were crawled to obtain the scenario elements of NCPHEs and categorized into the spreading stage or derivation stage. Finally, the key scenario nodes and scenario evolution process were analyzed in combination with a corresponding emergency response assessment of each scenario by experts.Dempster-Shafer (DS) theory and Bayesian networks (BNs) were applied for data reasoning, and a spread-derived coupled scenario-response theoretical model of NCPHEs for major public health emergencies was constructed. The scenario evolution path of COVID-19 was derived by combining seven types of major scenario states and corresponding emergency response measures extracted from 952 spreading scenarios.The 26 NCPHE spread scenarios and 41 NCPHE derivation scenarios were summarized.Optimized and pessimistic NCPHE scenario pathways were generated by combining the seven major spreading scenarios to help decision makers predict the development of NCPHEs and take timely and effective emergency response measures for key scenario nodes.This study provides a new approach for understanding and managing NCPHEs, emphasizing the need to consider the specificity and complexity of such emergencies when developing decision-making strategies. Our contextual derivation model and emergency decision-making system provide practical tools with which to enhance NCPHE response capabilities and promote public health and safety.

    Keywords: unconventional public health emergencies, Scenario evolution, bayesian networks, Emergency response, COVID-19

    Received: 02 Sep 2024; Accepted: 22 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Zhu, Yang, Fu, Cai, Wang and He. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence:
    Qing Yang, School of Safety Science and Emergency Management, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China
    chun Cai, School of Automotive Engineering, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China
    Jinmei Wang, School of Safety Science and Emergency Management, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China
    Ling He, School of Management, Wuhan Institute of Technology, Wuhan, 430073, Hubei Province, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.