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In June 2015 the lower North Island experienced a significant flooding event that forced many people out of their homes in Whanganui and closed a number of State Highways around the lower North Island including: SH4 from Raetihi to Whanganui, SH4 from Vinegar Hill to Cheltenham, SH43 from Stratford to Taumaranui, and SH3 through the Manawatu Gorge. Market Economics (ME), in conjunction with GNS Science and Resilient Organisations are, under the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) funded Economics of Resilient Infrastructure (ERI) project, currently nearing the completion of a ‘tool’ known as ‘MERIT’ (Measuring the Economic Resilience of Infrastructure Tool). MERIT may be used to assess the economic impacts associated with infrastructure outages, including transport related outages. While the MERIT tool has already been developed and operationised and tested for several types of infrastructure outage (e.g. electricity, water and port outages) each particular infrastructure outage requires specialised ‘interfaces’ to be built so as to capture the full extent of impacts arising. In the case of road outages this interface is still under construction. The Ministry of Transport (‘the Ministry’) has commissioned M.E. to apply the MERIT tool to assess the economic consequences of a closure in SHR from Raetihi to Whanganui. It is important to note that the scope of this study varies from the event actually experienced in June June 2015, which also involved other road closures. (auth) |
