Tsarpalis D., Karaferi E., Mohsen K., Vamvatsikos D., Zeppos J. (2024). A Mesoeconomic Resilience Framework For Regional Seismic Assessment Studies. Proceedings of the 18th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering, Milan, Italy.
Abstract | On account that modern societies cannot be built on earthquake-proof infrastructure (e.g., buildings, roads, power supplies), increasing resilience through preparedness and adaptation measures is the state-ofart approach to reduce severe consequences to core community functions. From an economic standpoint, the impact of a disaster can be discretized into two parts: (i) the direct losses, which comprise the cost needed to repair/replace the damaged/destroyed assets and (ii) the indirect losses, which are related to the reduction of gross valued added during the post-event period. Currently, most regional risk assessment studies are focusing on the evaluation of the direct losses, either ignoring the indirect part or using qualitative approaches to coarsely assess its impact. In support of risk assessment and crisis mitigation planning, a meso-scale economic resilience framework is proposed that allows a quantitative estimate of indirect loss in tandem with conventional direct loss assessment. The model is based upon a sector-wide approach, in which the individual businesses operating within the community are aggregated into compact sectors. Subsequently, the postevent performance of each sector is assessed using three indices, (a) the infrastructure index to measure the reduced productivity of a sector due to direct infrastructure damages, (b) the input index to propagate disruptions in the supply chain by employing Vendor Dependence Tables, and (c) the output index to reflect the reduction of demand due to disruptions (a) and (b). The model is designed to accommodate the salient characteristics of modern urban societies, addressing complex socioeconomic aspects such as the adaptive behaviour of residents and visitors, and the capability of a sector to redistribute business traffic within or outside the community. The methodology is demonstrated in the historical city of Granada in Spain, using three hypothetical earthquake scenarios of incremental intensity and impact.
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