A decision-making tool to assess external costs of disaster induced bridge failure

This paper presents a novel tool developed to assess the social, environmental and economic costs of disaster induced bridge failure and consequent impacts during reconstruction. This tool takes a holistic and localistic approach to assess impacts of bridge damage, which is found to be lacking in most decision-making tools and is designed to assist decision-makers in the road infrastructure sector to optimise reconstruction processes. The tool is designed to incorporate local knowledge and experience to formal decision-making processes encouraging local initiative and adaptation practices, with less reliance on state level intervention. The research adopted a participatory design approach and was validated through a case-study in a disaster affected region. Results showed that the socio-economic and environmental impacts could account for 25–30 % of the total impacts of bridge failure. The analysis showed that the duration of road closure was the most significant parameter influencing the wider impacts. This tool provides an opportunity for decision makers to assess the wider impacts of reconstruction processes and to select options that increase sustainability and resilience of communities.