Estimation des couts indirects des bris d'infrastructures souterraines au Quebec a travers 3 etudes de cas

The primary objective of this study is to make an overview of societal costs related to buried infrastructure breakages in Quebec. With five infrastructure breakages per day in 2012 for Quebec, a study on social and economic costs appears to be a necessity.;The objective of the study is to assess the overall costs of a broken underground infrastructure, requires the definition of these costs. When we study costs related to buried infrastructure breakages, we have to discern two main types of costs. The first are called direct costs and represent all the costs necessary for the rehabilitation and the repairing of the affected infrastructures during breaking. These costs include replacement material, hardware, project management, and hourly cost related to labor. With these direct costs, it is important to add the presence of indirect costs. These costs correspond to the economic evaluation of all the disturbances. These disturbances may be linked to the breakage more or less. These costs are varied and can cover a large range of fields. For example, we discern the cost of product lost, service interruptions, and emergency services interventions. Also, we focus on the costs related to the disturbance of the grounds and those due to the disturbance of the road traffic (congestion, deviation, overconsumption, etc). Finally, we see the costs of environmental impacts (noise, vibrations, various pollutions etc.) and economic factors associated with a visible decrease of the life quality.;This study was conducted as part of a research project in partnership with the Alliance for the protection of underground infrastructures (Info Excavation, l'Alliance pour la protection des infrastructures souterraines) as well as various underground infrastructure owners. The collaboration of CIRANO and Polytechnique Montreal for this project, supported by the Alliance, is divided into several parts. Firstly, we conducted a literature review of existing theories. These studies were then allowed us to gather a large number of estimation methods. After refreshing the different results of previous studies, we could define a procedure to estimate the direct and indirect costs that would be followed in our studies. The goal was to find, whatever the cost, the most effective method of estimation, but also the more explicit.;With this theoretical study, we added three case studies representative of breakages underground infrastructure in Quebec. These 3 studies had as main objective to combine a maximum of such costs but also be representative of the concerns of the different infrastructure owners. Thus, the study of a broken gas line, but also the study of a broken underground telecommunication cable and the study of a rupture of a drinking water pipeline were conducted. Through these three breakages, a lot of costs were studied: the cost of emergency service interventions, costs specific to a breakage of a pipeline, the costs of electrical service interruption, the costs related to traffic major disruptions, etc. The studies illustrate the concepts previously developed to highlight the importance of representing the indirect costs. We will see that it is not uncommon to find that indirect costs represent the majority of total costs. In some situations, we also show that indirect costs associated with a "minor" breach can reach several hundreds of thousands of dollars.;This project was conducted as part of a large study conducted by the CIRANO risk group. This study also assessed the total indirect costs for infrastructure breakages that occurred in Quebec in 2012. These results are part of the prevention policy advocated by the Alliance for the Protection of Underground Infrastructure in Quebec to promote good excavation practices. The results of the study illustrate the importance of the Alliance action. As if for an underground infrastructure breakages, total costs can quickly reach several tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars, the total annual cost to breakage of underground infrastructure in Quebec could amount to several millions or several tens of millions of dollars in damage.