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Estimating Business And Residential Water Supply Interruption Losses From Catastrophic Events, Nicholas Brozovic, David L. Sunding, David Zilberman

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

Following man-made or natural catastrophes, widespread and long-lasting disruption of lifelines can lead to economic impacts for both business and residential lifeline users. As a result, the total economic losses caused by infrastructure damage may be much higher than the value of damage to infrastructure itself. In this paper, we consider the estimation of economic impacts on businesses and residential consumers resulting from water supply disruption. The methodology we present for estimating business interruption losses assumes that marginal losses are increasing in the severity of disruption and that there may be a critical water availability cutoff below which business activity …