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Business Behaviour Module for Infrastructure Disruption Analysis

Solution Overview

The Business Behaviour Module (BBM) serves as an analytical tool for assessing infrastructure disruption impacts on economic activities in Wellington, analyzing effects such as electricity outages, fuel outages, gas outages, telecommunications outages, and building damage states.[1] This approach functions as one component of the broader MERIT framework, which consists of two parts: the Business Behaviour Module to calculate the operability function of all industries within the economy, and the Dynamic Economic Model.[3] The system was developed through collaboration with GNS Science's RiskScape and Post Disaster Cities teams, who modelled and mapped infrastructure service outages and restoration after a M7.5 Wellington Fault event and its associated perils including fault rupture, ground shaking, liquefaction, landslides, lateral spreading, and subsidence.[2]

Technical Components

The BBM operates as a logarithmic function that calculates operability—defined as the ability to meet demand—over time based on 15 disruption types.[3] This analytical tool converts infrastructure and non-infrastructure natural hazard impact data into impacts on businesses, classified by industry and location, then transforms this data into operability values representing the percentages of nominal output a business can sustain under outages of given durations.[3] The module calculates the operability of different economic industries across time given differing combinations of infrastructure disruptions.[3] The system incorporates an algorithm that triages multiple disruption types, with damage to buildings identified as one of the dominating features in economic disruption.[3] For short-term analysis, the Inoperability MERIT configuration provides data for outages between 1-day and 1-week from localised small-scale disruption events such as electricity, gas, or telecommunication outages.[1]

Implementation Details

The implementation was supported by GNS Science's RiskScape and Post Disaster Cities teams who modelled and mapped infrastructure service outages and restoration scenarios following a M7.5 Wellington Fault earthquake event.[2] The research underpinning this approach was published in 2020 by Brown C, McDonald G, Uma SR, Smith N, Sadashiva V, Buxton R, Grace E, Seville E, and Daly M in their study titled "From physical disruption to community impact: Modelling a Wellington Fault earthquake."[1] The modelling framework was applied to evaluate investment programmes designed to enhance Wellington's seismic resilience.

Benefits and Impacts

With the preferred programme of investments, the MERIT modelling demonstrated a multi-billion-dollar reduction in economic losses and improved community outcomes in the event of a major seismic event in Wellington.[2] The analytical capability enables quantification of how infrastructure disruptions translate into economic operability constraints across different industry sectors and timeframes. The system's ability to process multiple simultaneous disruption types provides comprehensive assessment of cascading infrastructure failures and their economic consequences.

Climate Adaptation Relevance

This approach addresses seismic hazards specific to Wellington's geological context, particularly the risks associated with a M7.5 Wellington Fault earthquake and its associated perils including fault rupture, ground shaking, liquefaction, landslides, lateral spreading, and subsidence.[2] The analytical framework enables evaluation of infrastructure resilience investments designed to reduce economic disruption from major seismic events.

Business Analysis

The MERIT modelling demonstrated that strategic infrastructure investments could generate multi-billion-dollar reductions in economic losses from major seismic events in Wellington.[2] This economic case supports investment prioritization decisions by quantifying the financial benefits of resilience measures across different infrastructure systems and business sectors. The framework provides decision-makers with quantitative evidence to justify capital expenditures on seismic resilience improvements by demonstrating substantial economic loss avoidance potential.

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