Disaster Recovery
Hazards such as hurricanes, flooding, drought, and fires are becoming the norm for many communities in the 21st century. Numerous articles in the mainstream and academic press focus on how environmental disruptions have impacted communities and how these communities have worked to combat these shocks. With the uptick in climatic hazards, communities are trying to understand better how they can overcome and recover.
Over the last couple of decades, the resiliency notion of three "A's" (anticipate, absorb, and adapt) has led the charge in this context. While resiliency has proven to be worthwhile in many aspects, it tends to leave out the process of post-disaster recovery. Yet, this process links how we get from absorb to adapt. Knowledge of the post-disaster recovery process is imperative for understanding how to anticipate and prepare for future shocks. This understanding allows communities to better plan for and anticipate how quickly they can get back to pre-disaster equilibrium. Without a strong foundation in the workings of the post-disaster recovery process, communities cannot plan for the future and adapt to future environmental shocks.
Emphasis on pre-disaster status
As the literature has shown, the extent and speed of recovery are as dependent on the community's status before the event as it is on the actual recovery process (infrastructure, emergency management, etc.). This basis is not necessarily a case of income or a well-functioning government but rather is a combination of multiple factors. Thus, recovery must look to create a balanced society across social, economic, environmental, and governance aspects. Communities might suffer from different types and levels of vulnerabilities pre-disaster that make the effects of the same disaster harsher for them compared to less vulnerable communities. Some communities or households are more socially vulnerable – e.g., class structure, gender issues -, some are more politically vulnerable – e.g., the form of government -, and some are more economically vulnerable – e.g., income level, government debt – that each affects different households differently.
The emotional recovery: issues of psychological and sociological stability
Since the 1970s, there has been a greater emphasis on the psychological well-being of communities post-disaster. This concept should be more integrated into hazards analyses since, without it, true recovery cannot happen. As disasters almost always lead to psychological distress among survivors and this emotional distress is more the result of the hardship of the recovery process and rebuilding than merely the impacts of the event, the disaster recovery process must consider addressing anxiety and stress, mood difficulties, somatic complaints, and behavioral changes among survivors.
Pre- and post-disaster equity
A just society meets everyone's basic needs. Recovery will not succeed unless both wealthy and disadvantaged neighborhoods get equal financial and resource aid. A significant intensifier of disaster risk is the unfair distribution of resources pre-and post-disaster that leads to disproportional impacts of the same disaster on people and different societies. As a result, communities do not achieve disaster recovery equally, nor does recovery follow a clear and specific process across all cities.
Resiliency
The first and last stage of the revamped model is the resiliency stage. This stage, in theory, would come before and continue through and after the commemorative stage, which is the fourth stage of the previous model. This stage considers previous disaster impacts and measures used to combat them. It should emphasize how well the community readjusts and reconfigures their society for each base (social, economic, environmental, and governance). We see the pre-development resiliency phase as the most important in the new reconfigured model. It lays the foundation for how well a community will rebound from a similar shock to the system.
In this sense, understanding how resilient a community is, enables decision-makers to predict how quickly the community will recover. With this understanding, they can estimate how long each recovery phase may take. It will help decision-makers distribute resources appropriately as well (Sobhaninia and Buckman, 2022).
Illustrative Publications