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Quantifying the Impacts of Infrastructure Failure on Businesses for Community Resilience Analysis

Rezvany, Negar | 2020

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  1. Type of Document: M.Sc. Thesis
  2. Language: Farsi
  3. Document No: 52802 (09)
  4. University: Sharif University of Technology
  5. Department: Civil Engineering
  6. Advisor(s): Haj Kazem Kashani, Hamed
  7. Abstract:
  8. The goal of this study is to investigate the effect of events such as earthquakes on businesses. Earthquakes can have a significant impact on the performance and profitability of businesses. Earthquakes can negatively affect the functionality of community infrastructure systems by damaging their components and this disruption in the functionality of the lifelines of the community can negatively affect the businesses that are dependent on their functionality. In addition, earthquakes will cause casualties and injuries, leading to a decrease in the workforce and the customers’ population. In such a situation, the activity of many businesses is disrupted and even stopped, which in turn has many consequences. These include closure and migration of businesses, an increase in unemployment and migration of the workforce, and also various economic, social, and security consequences. Much research has been done on identifying the impacts of earthquakes on a community and the failure of interdependent infrastructures. However, there is no comprehensive framework in the existing literature, which addresses the consequences of a disaster from a holistic viewpoint. The review of the literature shows that the impact of earthquakes on businesses has been mainly analyzed qualitatively in the context of community resilience analysis. Also, in the case of quantification of these consequences, there is not a comprehensive framework and only specific cases have been taken into account. Deficiency in quantifying the impacts of earthquakes on businesses will cause an underestimation of the financial loss sustained by society due to the failure of infrastructures and insufficient allocation of resources for retrofitting them. The present study aims at developing a comprehensive framework for analyzing the resilience of the community. This research is divided into three phases.In the first phase, a comprehensive map of the effects of the earthquake on businesses is developed, taking into account the causal relationship between them. In this phase, using a comprehensive review of the literature and analysis of the relevant materials, a complete map of the effects of an earthquake on the economic activities of a community has been developed. This map shows the causal relationships between the different consequences of an earthquake. This step is a stepping-stone for the quantification of the costs associated with the impact of an earthquake on the economic activities of a community.In the second phase, the most important of these consequences are determined based on the existing literature and are used in developing a detailed model. The modeling method that has been used is system dynamics modeling. In this phase, a system dynamics simulation model is proposed to characterize the dynamics of the post-earthquake performance of a manufacturing business. The capabilities of the proposed model are showcased by simulating it on a virtual community. The performance of a manufacturing business is determined based on the relationship between the performance of business facilities and the technical systems (e.g., utility and road networks) that it relies on for its performance as well as the state of the market in which it operates. It also characterizes the relationships between the production level and profitability of the business and the resources that it needs to operate including staff members, raw materials, and equipment. The model also takes into account the dynamics of supply and demand governing the prices of goods or services that the business produces. The model provides the administrators with an insight into how to reduce the vulnerability of a business in the face of probable future earthquakes.In the third phase, a system dynamics simulation model is presented to describe the post-earthquake performance of all the economic sectors in the virtual community. This modeling method provides a system dynamics simulation model based on an input-output framework to take into account the inter-industry relationships in order to assess the direct and indirect consequences of an earthquake on the economy of a community
  9. Keywords:
  10. Resilience ; Earthquake ; Infrastructure ; System Dynamic ; Community Resilience ; Business Process ; Input-Output Analysis

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