Modelling economic dimension of community resilience

Earthquakes and extreme events in general cause direct and indirect economic effects on every major economic sector of a given community. These effects have grown in the last years due to the increasing interdependency of the infrastructures and make the community more vulnerable to natural and humaninduced disruptive events. Therefore, there is need for metrics and models which are able to describe economic resilience, defined as the ability of a community affected by a disaster to resist at the shock and bounce back to the economy in normal operating conditions. Several attempts have been made in the past to achieve a better measurement and representation of the economic resilience and to find suitable metrics to help decision planning. The most popular methodologies are based on Computable General Equilibrium models (CGE) and Inoperability Input- Output models (IIM). In this study, we analyze these methods, showing advantages and limitations. Finally, a new method is proposed to evaluate economic resilience which is based on equilibrium growth models and compared with other approaches on a specific case study: the San Francisco Bay Area. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015.