From physical disruption to community impact: Modelling a Wellington Fault earthquake.

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]