A Socioeconomic Model For Estimating Indirect Consequences Of Earthquake Hazards To Cultural Heritage Communities

A socioeconomic model of the residents and visitors (i.e., users) and the local economy (i.e., production and consumption of goods, services, and small businesses) is proposed to simulate the core functions of a cultural heritage community. Given the direct infrastructure damages of an event, as those are derived by vulnerability and hazard assessment, the model is able to quantify the indirect losses per critical business sector as they evolve over time. This is accomplished by first deriving downtime estimates per sector, propagating the resulting disruptions through the demand-supply chain of the community, and then tracking their eventual recovery. The model is designed to accommodate the salient socioeconomic characteristics of the cultural heritage community, by giving heed to effects such as the adaptive behavior of the site visitors and the occurrence of an adverse event during a high or a low season for tourism. The methodology is finally illustrated and verified on the basis of several earthquake scenarios derived for the historical city of Rhodes, highlighting the potential usage of the tool during risk mitigation planning and post-event decision-making.