Review of Infrastructure Resiliency Policy for Natural Disasters

Abstract

The growing financial impact of natural disasters has motivated governments to rethink resiliency policy pertaining to built-infrastructure. The creation of an effective resiliency policy is a product of the interplay between informed elites (i.e., engineers, utility operators), governments, and citizen engagement. To help orientate informed elites on the prevalent trends and constraints in this policy domain, a literature review was conducted on built-infrastructure resiliency policy addressing natural disasters. Collection methodology consisted of a targeted keyword search on JSTOR, which resulted in forty relevant articles. Those articles were categorized into the following five resiliency policy approaches: mitigation, adaptation, economic, reconstruction, and policy frameworks. Additionally, a review of country-specific disaster response frameworks was also conducted. The review highlights recent trends in policy decisions. Decision-making on infrastructure resilience policy is moving from a national level to a local level. The consequences of that jurisdictional movement have caused policy decisions to favor mitigation and education tactics which prove to be more politically and fiscally feasible than adaptation tactics. The review also revealed a gap in the literature concerning the diversity of natural disasters being studied. A clear focus has been placed on earthquakes and flooding while wildfires and drought have been neglected.