Developing indicators to measure post‐disaster community recovery in the United States

Abstract

Disaster recovery is a key capability of federal, state, and local government. To support this capability effectively practitioners need useful and validated metrics to document how well a community is recovering from a particular disaster. This study developed and categorised recovery indicators according to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)'s Recovery Support Functions and Recovery Mission Area Core Capabilities through a literature review, an evaluation of the pre-disaster recovery plans for 87 coastal jurisdictions, and a case study of two communities (New Hanover County, North Carolina, and the City of Hoboken, New Jersey). Metrics identified in the literature were validated through the recovery plan review and the case study. The research team also identified sources for both baseline and current status data. Based on these findings, a user-friendly checklist for practitioners was established, which will be piloted with practice partners during a future disaster recovery initiative.

Index System to Evaluate the Quarries Ecological Restoration

“…Second, indicators should be sensitive to changes in the status of the recovery of the community over time or within key ecosystems, which allows for interactions to be explored. Third, the effects of communityand individual-level experiences also should be considered concurrently [24].…”

On the suitability of assessment tools for guiding communities towards disaster resilience

“…-Recovery ability is needed to restore system functionality, to its pre-event baseline conditions, within a short-to medium-term time frame [10,62]. Clearly, access to pre-event baseline conditions is essential for developing recovery plans.…”

“…A successful recovery is characterized by its speed and efficiency and these two factors should be considered in the assessment process. An effective way of evaluating recovery ability would be to determine a maximum desirable recovery time according to the severity of the event [63] and monitor recovery status at regular time intervals [62]. In the absence of disaster (pre-event), it is still essential to prepare for different potential scenarios and develop recovery plans accordingly [62].…”

“…An effective way of evaluating recovery ability would be to determine a maximum desirable recovery time according to the severity of the event [63] and monitor recovery status at regular time intervals [62]. In the absence of disaster (pre-event), it is still essential to prepare for different potential scenarios and develop recovery plans accordingly [62]. "Probabilistic approaches" can be used for this purpose [63].…”

Social media usage reveals recovery of small businesses after natural hazard events

“…Multiple indicators for the recovery process of an area have been proposed 4 , with many of them focusing on economic indicators of business activity thought to capture the long-term efforts of a region to return to a normal state. In particular, we refer herein to the recovery time as "downtime" relying on the definition within the Performance-Based Engineering framework; i.e., "the time necessary to plan, finance, and complete repairs on facilities damaged in earthquakes or other disasters" 5 and applying the downtime concept to small businesses.…”