The value of water—estimating water-disruption impacts on businessesShow others and affiliations
2021 (English)In: Water, E-ISSN 2073-4441, Vol. 13, no 11, article id 1565Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
As water serves as a necessary and often irreplaceable input in a range of goods and services, a disruption in water supply can cause lost production and sales for businesses. Thus, large benefits may be generated by reducing the risk of water disruptions. To enable selection of economically viable risk mitigation measures, the investment costs should be weighed against the benefits of risk mitigation. Consequently, quantitative estimates of the consequences of disruptions need to be available. However, despite the importance of water to businesses, the literature on their financial losses due to short and long-term water disruptions is still scarce. The aim of this paper is to estimate time-dependent water supply resiliency factors for economic sectors, i.e., a metric focusing on the level of output that businesses can uphold during a disruption, to contribute to better decision support for water supply planning and risk management. An online survey was used to gather data from 1405 companies in Sweden on consequences of complete and unplanned water supply outages. Results show that Food and beverage Manufacturing and Accommodation and food services are the two most severely affected sectors over all analyzed disruption durations. © 2021 by the authors
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
MDPI AG , 2021. Vol. 13, no 11, article id 1565
Keywords [en]
Business interrup-tion, Critical infrastructure disruption, Economic loss, Resiliency factor, Risk mitigation, Water supply outage, Decision support systems, Losses, Risk assessment, Risk management, Risk perception, Service industry, Decision supports, Economic sectors, Economically viable, Investment costs, Online surveys, Quantitative estimates, Water supply planning, Water supply
National Category
Water Engineering
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:ri:diva-54966DOI: 10.3390/w13111565Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85108458265OAI: oai:DiVA.org:ri-54966DiVA, id: diva2:1577320
Note
Funding details: Sveriges Meteorologiska och Hydrologiska Institut, SMHI; Funding text 1: Funding: This research was funded by Mistra the Swedish Foundation for Strategical Environmental Research and SMHI the Swedish Meteorological and Hydrological Institute.
2021-07-022021-07-022023-08-28Bibliographically approved