Post-disaster recovery: the challenge of anticipation

Abstract

Abstract. The recurrence of disasters, sometimes in the same territories, questioned the effectiveness of the preventive logic and of the post-disaster recovery process. The present reconstruction approach aims at analysing the interactions between risk, societies and territories. The study of the recovery process in a holistic way through a medium and long-term feedback defines its operating rules, and its "good and bad practices" regarding the objectives of risk reduction and sustainable development. The lack of anticipation, the numerous uncertainties and the emergency in which the decisions are taken, lead in many cases, to risk persistence and increased social gaps. When "preventive ethics" is integrated into the process, it remains occasional and marginal. Reconstruction does not start from a "zero state"; it is subjected to territorial, economic and political constraints. Thus, in order to make the postdisaster reconstruction a preventive opportunity, an anticipatory effort is needed -though necessarily limited -it must be accompanied by an ex-post planning. These considerations will be illustrated by the examples of the recovery of two French departments: the Aude department after the 12 th and 13 th November 1999 floods, and the Var department after the 15 th and 16 th June 2010 floods.

Ethics and Floods: A Systematic Review

“…31 Community engagement requires "hard work, sincerity, and honesty," but is ethically valuable, 32 especially to identify important local knowledge and cultural values. 9,16 The third subtheme points to the importance of cultural values in communication. 9 Cultural differences contribute to ethical conflicts, particularly in stressful settings.…”

“…8 For example, 2 days of heavy rain in 2010 led to €1.2 billion in damages to Dracénie, a small region in southern France. 9 Floods accompany other hazards like hurricanes and cyclones, as when a 1999 severe cyclone in Odisha, India had 10,000 flood-related deaths. 10 Floods impact human health strongly, with disease outbreaks occurring short-term, mortality rates in the first year increasing by up to 50%, and psychological distress lasting much longer.…”

Approaches to state flood recovery funding in Visegrad Group Countries

“…Second, pre-disaster recovery planning should be activated at all governance levels to clearly delineate the priorities during the recovery period and how they are to be (or not) funded; e.g. the preparation of adjustments to land-use plans to speed up resettlements (Moatty & Vinet, 2016;Mohd, Abu Bakar, Hassan, & Hussain, 2017).…”

“…Recovery is among the key activities in flood risk management (FRM); it comes after the immediate threat passes, a focus on reconstruction takes place and the affected area attempts to return to 'normality' (Medd et al, 2015). While the importance of recovery for future damage reduction used to be underestimated and recovery was considered only a temporary limited period of the so-called disaster cycle (Drennan, McGowan, & Tiernan, 2016), recent studies have increasingly acknowledged that it has a much greater potential to reduce vulnerability (Medd et al, 2015;Moatty & Vinet, 2016). A postdisaster situation opens a 'window of opportunity' for more transformative changes in complex systems (Brundiers & Hallie, 2018;Thomalla et al, 2018).…”

A Geographic Analysis of Post-Disaster Social Impacts on a Municipal Scale – A Case Study of a Potential Major Flood in the Paris Region (France)

“…Inasmuch as populations are not equal in this process, social and spatial disparities are then aggravated by the recovery process with potential consequences on the social fabric of communities, as outlined by the example of the New Orleans metropolitan area after Katrina (Falk et al, 2006;Green et al, 2007;Groen & Polivka, 2010). If some researchers insist on the recovery process as a "window of opportunity" to prevent future disasters (Moatty & Vinet, 2016), this paper strictly focuses on the study of those social and spatial disparities, and the capability of populations to recover from a disaster.…”