Using Regional Economic Models to Estimate the Costs of Infrastructure Failures: The Cost of a Limited Interruption in Electric Power in the Los Angeles Region

An integrated model of losses caused by infrastructure failures is presented together with an example application to interruptions in electric power. The model estimates how these losses affect the metropolitan economy. This measurement accounts for direct, indirect, and induced costs that can result from infrastructure failures. The procedure advances the information provided by transportation and activity system analysis techniques in ways that help capture the most important economic implications of infrastructure failures. Transportation network costs and origin-destination requirements are modeled endogenously and consistently. The overall research framework permits these full costs to be expressed in aggregate terms at a submetropolitan level as well as in a distributional sense.