Economic impact vulnerabilities

It is difficult to predict the vulnerability of our food and water supply to a deliberate attack. Within most industriahzed countries, food and water supplies are safe for consumption. However, the increased centralization of food production and water distribution in the United States gives potential saboteurs an opportunity to affect a large population (67). For large centralized food or water production and distribution systems, the potential size of an outbreak following intentional contamination increases as the contamination point gets closer to the site of production or distribution. In addition to morbidity and mortality, deliberate attacks on food and water supplies could have significant economic impact, even if the affected population is relatively small (67,68). Although the contamination was not intentional, in 1998 a US company recalled 30 million pounds of frankfurters and luncheon meat due to possible Listeria contamination, at a cost of 50- 70 million (67). 

The economic impact of a spurious or nuisance trip of an ESD system can be disastrous. An ESD system is an important layer of protection to prevent and prevent hazardous situations from occurring. So, it is needless to mention that the ESD system must be extremely reliable and function on demand. During an emergency, it must put the process in a safe state in orderly fashion. Also ESD systems design shall be based on a fail safe independent system, that is, ESD systems are such that during a failure of a component the process reverts to a condition considered safe and not a vulnerable serious hazardous event. Reliability and availability are major parameters for ESD system performance. Reliability is a function of system failure rate (its reciprocal) and mean time between failures. Spurious trip conditions may initiate a so-called fail safe incident that may result in accidental shutdown of equipment or processes. However, undetected process design errors or operations may initiate dangerous incidents that may disable the safety interlock and may even cause accidental process... 

Economic impact Eunctional impact Infrastructure systems Lifelines Physical impact Seismic fragility Seismic vulnerability... 

This type of constructive impact of TSCA was viewed somewhat differently by Exxon Chemical Company s C.W. Umland. His review of nearly three years of premanufacturing notification cited evidence which suggests substantial disruption of new chemical development and introduction to the market. This disruption was traced to higher research and development costs at an economically vulnerable point in the life cycle of innovative products. A more appropriate balance between opportunity for economic viability and protection from unreasonable... 

Primary energy supply is a key issue for any new transportation fuel. Constraints on domestic resources and production of petroleum have led to increasing levels of imports. An important policy driver for alternative fuels for transportation in the USA is that they will alleviate some of the issues surrounding dependence and economic vulnerability related to petroleum imports, especially from politically unstable parts of the world. This raises some important questions for hydrogen as a future alternative fuel will the USA have the resources to produce hydrogen for vehicles at low cost and with low environmental impact ... 

Restoration of the damaged physical, social, economic, and environmental impacts of disasters is a complicated and drawn-out process. Reconstruction and recovery projects often focus on quick restoration of affected communities which can replicate and worsen existing vulnerabilities faced by the community. The Tsunami Evaluation Commission Synthesis Report in 2007 provided examples where escalated pressures and the need for fast rebuilding and recovery processes following a disaster can further increase the vulnerabihty of a community. Examples include nonadherence to design and construction policies for buildings and... 

Lifelines and critical facilities are essential public infrastructures and networks that support citizen s life, economy, and industry. Experience from past earthquakes reveals that their components are quite vulnerable and the induced damages can have high impact in the emergency response as well as serious economic and health consequences. Losses can be even higher because of the extensive interdependencies between utility networks and infrastructures. Therefore, high priority should be given to secure safety of lifeline facilities against earthquakes and reduce the overall impact. 

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