Impact analysis of natural disasters using interrelation of infrastructure and associated industries

Most serious natural disasters cause fatalities and injuries, and result in infrastructure damage, economic impacts, and social effects. With respect to the nature of impacts, it is important to understand the direct and indirect impacts of natural disasters on infrastructure and industries. In this paper, a holistic disaster impact analysis framework is presented to support more understanding of natural disaster events with respect to inter-relation of infrastructure and associated industries. Disaster impact mechanism and inter-relations based on critical function of industries derived from the extensive literature review and case studies. To develop the framework, service factor is chosen to measure the level of inter-relations and proper weights for each inter-relation between infrastructure and associated industries are obtained by surveying experts in the area of disaster mitigation, emergency organizations, and infrastructure management. This paper focuses on the impact analysis of hurricane disaster and the outcome can also be applied to other types of disasters.