Analysis of Economic Resiliency of Communities Affected by Natural Disasters: The Bay Area Case Study

Abstract

The paper focuses on the economic impact of natural disasters on different economic sectors in a given community considering their interdependencies. In the last twenty years, several catastrophe models have been developed for measuring economic losses. Nevertheless, due to the lack of data and the complexity of the problem, significant levels of uncertainties are still present. In fact, the factors that drive the economic recovery process before, during, and after natural disasters needs to be determined to select the optimal resources allocation and preparedness measures right after an extreme event. In most of the previous catastrophe models interdependencies between physical and nonphysical infrastructures are mostly neglected. This paper is proposing a model that describes the economic effects and characteristics that should be taken into account to predict the monetary impact of natural disasters, focusing in particular on the economic interdependencies of industries and lifelines. Different types of losses are considered using real economic data provided by surveys on natural disasters such as Northridge earthquake, Des Moines flood, etc. The data associated with the physical damages are obtained from HAZUS database. The Economic Resilience Index provided in the PEOPLES framework is adopted and applied to the specific case study of the San Francisco Bay Area. Sensitivity analysis is performed for each economic sector considered in the analysis.