The Resilience Reconnaissance Framework: a Guidance To Collect Data To Describe Processes Behind the Recovery of Communities Struck By Earthquakes

Abstract eng:
Earthquake reconnaissance is an approach to rapidly conduct general damage surveys of a region or area following an earthquake to document initial important observations about earthquake impacts, and assess the need for follow-up areas of research. Traditional reconnaissance is typically conducted by a team of earthquake risk mitigation experts who investigate earthquake impacts immediately following search and rescue activites. This paper proposes a unique, new framework that can expand traditional reconnaissance into the realm of community earthquake resilience. As defined in the proposed framework, the goal of ‘resilience reconnaissance’ is to understand how an earthquake affects the continuity of different services and functions (e.g., transportation, water, food, shelter, etc.), and how disruption of these vital services and functions impacts different groups within a community. This new approach to reconnaissance will require field investigations that span the dimensions of time, space, and perspective. With respect to time, investigators would attempt to understand the status of a service or function before the earthquake, immediately afterwards, and at subsequent time intervals following the event (e.g., during the response, restoration, short-term recovery, and long-term recovery phases). With respect to space, investigators would attempt to document the availability of a particular service or function across different spatial scales, ranging from an entire region or community to individual districts or neighborhoods, ideally at each time interval of interest. With respect to perspective, investigators would attempt to gain insights on earthquake impacts from a diverse group of stakeholders, including providers of the service (e.g., utility operators, government agencies, etc.), consumers of the service (e.g., businesses, households, etc.), and those entities that regulate or monitor the service (e.g., local, state, and/or federal government). This represents a significant expansion in scope and strategy for reconnaissance. The proposed resilience reconnaissance framework includes other important concepts and actionable recommendations in the form of research questions, data collection timelines, meeting/interview protocols, and trip planning checklists. A set of implementation recommendations for resilience reconnaissance are also proposed including (1) expansion of traditional reconnaissance team approach, (2) utilization of one organization as a primary coordinator of reconnaissance activities, (3) use of a clearinghouse website for data archival and sharing, and (4) development of an field guide to help invesigators implement the framework. By using this framework, community earthquake resilience can be observed in a thorough and meaningful way that will allow both researchers and decison makers to better understand how vital community services can be improved so that they recover more quickly after future earthquakes.

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