Search

In the context of infrastructure and natural hazard planning, a new agenda for applied research is emerging which, focused on resilience, integrates government, hazard science, engineering and economics. This paper sets out the context and key tenets guiding the direction of this topic of enquiry, including the New Zealand legislative and policy context under which infrastructure decisions are made, core principles implied by the resilience objective, current norms and challenges in the practice of infrastructure planning, and key criteria for decision-support tools. While decision-making processes strongly informed by cost-benefit analysis (CBA) continue to be common in the New Zealand policy process, this paper demonstrates that there are certain distinguishing features of infrastructure networks that make it challenging to effectively and validly apply standard CBA approaches, particularly when resilience values are at stake. To help address this challenge, a new conceptual framework is presented to assist in the critical review and selection of decisionmaking tools to support infrastructure planning. This framework provides a synthesis of the ways through which contextual uncertainties influence the relative advantages and appropriateness of different decision support tools. Ultimately, we seek to promote a diverse but also nuanced approach to analysis supporting infrastructure planning under seismic and other natural hazard risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modelling the economic impact of an earthquake event provides a means to support decision-making for investment options to improve disaster preparedness. Quantification of economic impact requires a comprehensive understanding of how damage to physical assets such as buildings and infrastructure networks translates into disruption to, and impact on, communities and businesses. This paper describes how a scenario narrative was developed as an essential prerequisite for an ex-ante economic assessment of a Wellington Fault event in Aotearoa New Zealand. The approach begins with the development of a suite of infrastructure asset damage and restoration maps, which account for infrastructure interdependencies. This data is then translated, based on expert elicitation processes, into a range of post-earthquake behaviours including population displacement, business disruption and relocation, and tourism effects. Lastly, these behaviours are set up as inputs for a novel economic model that captures out-of-equilibrium dynamics and behavioural adaptation. This narrative, alongside the economic modelling component, has been used to support decision-making around regional infrastructure resilience investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Byline: Nigel Jollands, Nancy Golubiewski, Garry McDonald The world is becoming increasingly urbanised. As settlements expand in size and complexity, planners face increasingly challenging issues, like urban 'sprawl', traffic congestion, increasing demand for employment opportunities, loss of a sense of community, and pressure on critical infrastructure and environmental resources. Many metropolitan areas have developed strategies to cope with this ongoing urban growth. A common focus of these is to consider the need to create employment opportunities, but this ignores the future impact of changing employment patterns on the ecosystem service requirements of that city. Here, we investigate the question, 'What impact does employment structure have on a city's ecosystem service requirements?' by exploring the notion of ecosystem services. We use the Greater Christchurch metropolitan areas as a case study to investigate and understand the link between employment structure and a city's resource use. Specifically, we investigate land use, energy use and waste generation.