Post-disaster reconstruction—What does it mean to rebuild with resilience?

Abstract

There is a growing awareness that we live in times of uncertainty and change; this is fuelling increased consciousness of city and community vulnerability to natural and man-made hazards. In recent years the concept of resilience—the ability to both withstand and recover from a “shock”—has become a core term in international, national and local policy for urban development. Because resilience has been adopted in a range of decision-making contexts, various interpretations of the concept are potentially confusing for those attempting to adopt it in their own decision making. To help provide clarity, this chapter presents a framework that captures different interpretations of resilience as a concept to frame decisions for disaster risk reduction in our communities and cities. This framework acknowledges that resilience is a trans-disciplinary concept; its purpose is to help create a coherent understanding of how sector-specific applications of resilience lie within a broader conception of resilience in disaster risk management. More specifically, the framework is used to examine how resilience is considered in the post-earthquake reconstruction of infrastructure networks in Christchurch, New Zealand. There is still much to learn from case studies of post-disaster recovery, where the recovery environment introduces different and perhaps unfamiliar levels of complexity in decision-making compared to business as usual planning and development.