Economics of Resilient Infrastructure (EoRI) is a research project funded by the New Zealand government. Running from 2012 – 2016, the EoRI project developed a suite of new models to:
quantify the economic implications of vulnerabilities to infrastructure failure from both natural hazards and infrastructure-only events, and
explore alternative infrastructure-related mitigation, adaptation, and recovery strategies.

MERIT
(Measuring the Economics of Resilient Infrastructure Tool)
MERIT is an integrated spatial decision support system that enables a high-resolution assessment across space and through time of the economic consequences of infrastructure failure, business response, and recovery options.
MERIT can significantly enhance New Zealand’s economic modelling capability and can be used as a test-bed to inform public policy:
- Central Government, where choices around new investment and the infrastructure resilience work programme are being made.
- Local Government, where planning, investment and CDEM response issues relating to infrastructure are addressed.
- Infrastructure providers looking to understand the wider societal value of infrastructure resilience improvements when considering investment and mitigation business cases.
MERIT
(Measuring the Economics of Resilient Infrastructure Tool)
MERIT is an integrated spatial decision support system that enables a high-resolution assessment across space and through time of the economic consequences of infrastructure failure, business response, and recovery options.
MERIT significantly enhance New Zealand’s economic modelling capability and can be used as a test-bed to inform public policy:
- Central Government, where choices around new investment and the infrastructure resilience work programme are being made.
- Local Government, where planning, investment and CDEM response issues relating to infrastructure are addressed.
- Infrastructure providers looking to understand the wider societal value of infrastructure resilience improvements when considering investment and mitigation business cases.

Project goals
Resilient Organisation’s role in the EoRI project was to develop a business behaviours causal framework to describe the effect of disruptions on an organisation’s operability or their ability to meet demand.
The framework links external infrastructure and non-infrastructure impacts to the degree of disruption experienced by individual organisations. In turn, the framework shows that an organisation’s operability is affected by that experienced disruption, along with other organisational factors that can improve operability levels in the face of disruption, such as organisational demographics, pre-event mitigation, post-event adaptation, and resilience.
Project team
GNS Science
Market Economics Ltd
Resilient Organisations
Research Institute for Knowledge Systems (RIKS)
Auckland Council
Tony Fenwick (Wellington) and Simon Worthington (Christchurch)
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Our funders
Funding of $2.8 m over 4-years was granted within the New Zealand Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment’s 2012 Investment Round. The project has connections to a number of other New Zealand central government funded programmes including the Natural Hazards Platform.
Key contact
Erica Seville
Executive Director
p:Â 021 456 706
e : erica.seville@resorgs.org.nz
Project outputs
Businesses and the Canterbury earthquakes: how do their experiences translate to other contexts?
T. Hatton, E. Seville, C. Brown, J. R. Stevenson
March 2016, ERI Research Report 2016/01.
Developing the Business Behaviours Module within MERIT
Charlotte Brown, Erica Seville, Joanne Stevenson, Sonia Giovinazzi, John Vargo. August 2015. ERI Research Report 2015/02.
Disruption and Resilience: How Organisations coped with the Canterbury Earthquakes
Erica Seville, Joanne Stevenson, Charlotte Brown, Sonia Giovinazzi, John Vargo. December 2014. ERI Research Report 2014/002.