Comparative Recovery Modeling: Baselines and Extent of Built-Environment Recoverability

Keywords: Recovery process, Built-up environment change, Hazards, Resilience, Dynamic model
Session Type: Virtual Paper Abstract
Day: Monday
Session Start / End Time: 2/28/2022 03:40 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada)) - 2/28/2022 05:00 PM (Eastern Time (US & Canada))
Room: Virtual 17

Abstract

Recovery after a major event is a complex process influenced by several factors like the scale of event, capacities and capabilities, existing vulnerabilities, socio-economic status of communities, and performance of institutions and infrastructures. Most models of disaster recovery employ a stage-approach, describing conditions for discrete phases in the recovery process such as emergency response or restoration. As the non-ergodic nature of human processes defies a prediction for recovery process, we can provide a range for possible future outcomes from pre-existing conditions (years before an event) that provides a baseline of existing characteristics at the time of the event, to a case-based post-event expectation for recovery outcomes that can gauge the relative success of recovery trend. The Tempo-variant Model of Disaster Recovery offers a conceptualization of the continuous temporal and spatial progress of post-event recovery, which accounts for pre-existing dynamics in the community as a baseline and accommodates recovery planning. This framework is implemented for one sample indicator – built-environment change - using a comparative analysis of recovery after earthquakes in India, Iran, China, Italy, Chile, and New Zealand. The longitudinal data for built-environment change is derived from Landsat imagery from pre-event to post-event for each of the six cases. Results provide a comparative view of recovery process for the studied cases with a locally case-dependent baseline and a range for recoverability.