Analysis of Lifeline Damages and Economic Impacts of an Earthquake: Development of an Integrated Economic-Engineering Assessment Model

University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign, Urbana IL

Investigators

Abstract

Proposal: CMS - 0099724 PI: Geoffrey Hewings Institution: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Date: May 25, 2001 ABSTRACT CMS0099724 "Analysis of Lifeline Damages and Economic Impacts of an Earthquake: Development of an Integrated Economic-Engineering Assessment Model Research will be carried out by the colleagues in the U.S. (University of Illinois/SUNY @ Buffalo) and Japan (Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry), who have been collaborating on the development of regional and interregional economic impact and forecasting models for both countries for over three years. An integrated economic-engineering model will be cdonstructed to estimate the indirect impacts of an earthquake and to simulate recovery activities and its system-wide effects. The project will build on a set of recently completed models, including an engineering model for assessing the lifeline damages in an urban area and economic models for estimating the indirect impacts and effects of an earthquake in urban, regional, and interregional contexts. Attention is directed to the integration of the engineering model and economic models, systematically connecting time, space, and the damages between two different modeling schem3s. Once completed, analysis will focus on the following policy implications: a) evaluation of retrofit strategies on lifeline systems; b) sensitivity analysis of emergency management plans; and c) life cycle assessment of lifeline facilities aganist earthquakes. The constructed integrated model will also provide the information on the propagation paths of the economic impacts in an interregional context, the relationshop between physical damages and economic impacts, and the time series analysis of the economics impacts focusing on production chronologies. The interregional focus derives from urban areas; increasing dependence on external markets for sources of inputs and as destinations for the consumption of goods and services produced in the urban area. The major contributions will lie in the way in which different engineering and economic modeling paradigms are integrated, the perspectives that can be learned from experience in other countries and the identification of crwitical linkages that needs to be explored to assist in recovery efforts.