Evaluating and Visualizing the Economic Impact of Commercial Districts Due to an Electric Power Network Disruption

AbstractCritical infrastructure networks enable social behavior, economic productivity, and the way of life of communities. Disruptions to these cyber –physical–social networks highlight their importance. Recent disruptions caused by natural phenomena, including Hurricanes Harvey and Irma in 2017, have particularly demonstrated the importance of functioning electric power networks. Assessing the economic impact (EI) of electricity outages afte r a service disruption is a challenging task, particularly when interruption costs vary by the type of electric power use (e.g., residential, commercial, industrial). In contrast with most of the literature, this work proposes an approach to spatially evaluate EIs of disruptions to particular compon ents of the electric power network, thus enabling resilience‐based preparedness planning from economic and community perspectives. Our contribution is a mix‐method approach that combines EI evaluation, component importance analysis, and GIS visualization for decision making.We integrate geographic information systems and an economic evaluation of sporadic electric power outages to provide a tool to assist with prioritizing restoration of power in commercial areas that have the largest impact. By making use of public data describing commercial market value, gross domestic product, and electric area distribution, this article proposes a method to evaluate the EI experienced by commercial districts. A geospatial visualization is present...
Source: Risk Analysis - Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Tags: Original Research Article Source Type: research