Purpose: How to identify the critical success factors (CSFs) of public health emergencies (PHEs) is of great practical significance to carry out a scientific and effective risk assessment. The purpose of this paper is to address this issue.Design/methodology/approach: In this paper, the authors propose a new approach to identify the CSFs by hesitant fuzzy linguistic set and a Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) approach. First, a larger group of experts are clustered into three groups according to similarity degree. Then, the weight of each cluster is determined by the maximum consensus method, and the overall direct influence matrix is obtained by clustering with hesitant fuzzy linguistic weighted geometric (HFLWG) operators. Finally, the overall direct influence matrix is transformed into the crisp direct impact matrix by the score function, and 11 CSFs of PHEs are identified by using the extended DEMATEL method.Findings: In addition, an example of PHEs shows that the approach has good identification applicability. The approach can be used to solve the problems of fuzziness and subjectivity in linguistic assessments, and it can be applied to identify the customer service framework with the linguistic assessments process in emergency management.Originality/value: This paper extends the above DEMATEL method to study in the hesitant fuzzy linguistic context. This proposed hybrid approach has a wider application in the high-risk area where disasters frequently occur.

Purpose: Owing to the limitations of traditional infectious disease dynamic systems in accurately encapsulating the nuances of China’s dynamic epidemic prevention policies and considering the varying sensitivity of local governments to the unfolding of public health emergencies (PHEs), this paper introduces a novel infectious disease dynamic system. Design/methodology/approach: This system, rooted in the distinct characteristics of infectious diseases and nuanced prevention and control measures, leverages a learning model for enhanced precision. It intricately incorporates factors such as the infectivity in sealed and controlled areas and the role of asymptomatic patients, thereby refining the dynamics of isolation, sealing, control and the transition from asymptomatic to confirmed cases. Employing the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) parameter estimation approach significantly augments the accuracy in pinpointing the valid parameters of disease spread. Empirical analysis was meticulously carried out, using data from the Shanghai epidemic from 1 Mar 2022 to 1 Jul 2022. Findings: This analysis not only illuminates the profound impact of control efforts on the trajectory of the epidemic but also underscores the pivotal role of social distancing in curbing the rapid transmission of infectious diseases. Furthermore, it reveals that an accelerated detection rate during the swift spread and peak of the epidemic paradoxically leads to a surge in confirmed cases and a consequent strain on medical resources, thereby impeding the pace of medical intervention. Originality/value: A stage-wise dissection of the Shanghai epidemic and comparative analyses against the evolution profiles in ASEAN countries elucidates the five stages of PHE risk evolution in alignment with the crisis lifecycle theory. These stages encompass hidden transmission, multi-point dissemination, multi-chain parallelism, rapid spread, fluctuation rebound and multi-community spread, each presenting unique challenges and dynamics in the control and management of the epidemic.

People in the epicenter suffer from emergency medical supplies shortage in the early stage of a public health emergency because of imbalanced supply-demand in different regions or areas, which is a key issue in a major infectious disease. In response to the severe insufficiency of supplies in the epicenter, this study proposed a strategy of distributing supplies from peripheral areas to the epicenter and gave a supply-side selection model considering the epidemic influence and supplies condition in the candidate supply-side areas. First of all, the epidemic spatial-temporal transmission path (STTP) network describing the geographic spread of disease is obtained using a first-order conditional dependence approximation algorithm in a dynamic Bayesian network (DBN). Then, the structural information of the STTP network and the supplies condition characteristic information are combined using the Bipartite network embedding (BiNE) method. Finally, a graph convolutional neural network (GCN) is conducted to select the supply-side areas for peripheral-epicenter supplies distribution based on information achieved from the bipartite graph. The results show that the highest supplies allocation accuracy reaches 87%. Validation and supremacy of the proposed methodology are provided by applying it to the case in Hubei province. This study considers crossed-areas supplies distribution strategy and contributes to select suitable supply-side areas considering the epidemic and supplies condition in the peripheral areas, which is helpful to both epicenter and peripheral areas.