Factors affecting the speed and quality of post-disaster recovery and resilience

Abstract

This chapter pulls together insights about post-disaster resilience and recovery from a comparison of 10 recent earthquake disasters. Recovery is a complex process that starts immediately after a disaster. In simple terms, it involves a return to normality. But recovery is not only about speed; the quality of reconstruction and the idea of building back better are also important. To better understand which factors may affect the speed of recovery, data from the 10 earthquake events are analysed in terms of 3 exogenous factors that are given, and 5 sets of endogenous factors that are within the control of decision-makers and planners – authority, decision-making, planning, finance and science. The somewhat surprising finding is that there appears to be little relation between speed of recovery and the exogenous factors of size of impact, population demographics and economic factors. However, there is a clear relationship between the standard of post-disaster management decision-making and both the speed (R2 = 0.56) and quality of recovery (R2 = 0.90). The relationship between post-disaster decision-making and the quality of recovery in terms of whether crucial aspects of the society and economy are built back better is striking.