The Earthquake Engineering Online Archive

Sequencing repairs after an earthquake: an economic approach

Casari, Marco; Wilkie, Simon J.

PEER-2003/09, Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center, University of California, Berkeley, 2003, 28 pages (400/P33/2003-09)

This study argues that current reconstruction procedures after natural disasters or civil disturbance could benefit greatly from the adoption of mechanisms that are incentive compatible and that efficiently aggregate information. Because of their clear social importance, attention is focused on the restoration of those essential services known in the civil engineering literature as lifelines: water, gas, electricity, and telephone systems. This report presents a class of mechanisms for repair work that a disinterested planner without comprehensive information about repair costs could adopt.

Available online: http://peer.berkeley.edu/publications/peer_reports/reports_2003/0309.pdf