Recent natural and manmade disasters have had significant regional economic impacts. These effects have been muted, however, by the "resilience" of individual businesses and of regional markets, which refers to the inherent ability and adaptive responses that enable firms and regions to avoid potential losses. In this seminar, we illustrate some of these contributions in a case study of the sectoral and regional economic impacts of a disruption to the Portland Metropolitan Water System in the aftermath of a major earthquake.
Several attempts have recently been made to identify the key indicators of community resilience and to group them into an overall resilience index. In this seminar, we will also examine existing resilience indices in relation to economic principles and evaluate their potential to gauge and improve post-disaster economic recovery, with a focus on businesses.
Adam Rose is a Research Professor in the USC Sol Price School of Public Policy, and Coordinator for Economics at USC's Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE).
Before coming to USC, he served as Professor and Head of the Department of Energy and Environmental Economics at the Pennsylvania State University. Much of Professor Rose's research is on the economics of natural and man-made hazards. He currently serves as an advisor on disaster resilience to the United Nations Development Programme and recently served on a National Research Council panel on Earthquake Resilience. He recently completed a DHS-sponsored study examining tradeoffs and synergies between urban security and commerce. Professor Rose's other research area is the economics of energy and climate change policy. As a consultant to the United Nations, he played a major role in the development of the first proposal for a system of globally tradable emission allowances. More recently, he has advised government agencies in several U.S. states on the development of cap & trade programs and on the job impacts of climate action plans.
