A new end-user-oriented and dynamic approach to post-disaster resilience quantification for individual facilities.

Community recovery from a disaster is a complex process, in which the importance of different types of infrastructure functionality can change over time. Most of the myriad of metrics available for measuring disaster resilience do not capture the dynamic importance of functionality explicitly, however. This means that very different recovery trajectories of a given infrastructure can correspond to the same resilience value, regardless of variations in its utility over time. While some efforts have been made to integrate features of time dependency into individual facility resilience quantification, the resulting metrics either capture only a limited set of temporal instances throughout the post-disaster phase or do not offer a way to prioritize time steps in line with variations in the importance of facility functionality. This study proposes a novel, straightforward metric for component-level post-disaster resilience quantification that overcomes the aforementioned limitations. The metric involves a dynamic weighting component that enables stakeholders to place varying emphasis on different temporal points throughout the recovery process. The end-user-centered approach to resilience quantification facilitated by the metric allows for flexible, context-specific interpretations of infrastructure functionality importance that may vary across different communities. The metric is demonstrated through a hypothetical case study of infrastructure facilities with varying degrees of importance across the post-disaster recovery period, which showcases its versatility relative to a previously well-established measurement of component-level resilience. The proposed metric has significant potential for use in stakeholder-driven approaches to decision making on critical infrastructure (as well as other types of built environment) recovery and resilience.

Risk perception in long-term evacuees of Futaba town, Fukushima: a cross-sectional study reveals greater concerns outside the prefecture, 12 years after the accident.

For over 12 years since the 2011 East Japan Earthquake, the decontamination of radioactive materials is still incomplete. Although evacuation orders had been lifted in ~15% of Futaba town, the site of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, by August 2022, anxiety regarding the effects of nuclear radiation persists among evacuees, and their intention to return (ITR) remains low. As of August 2023, only 90 residents lived there. As the only town with government functions relocated outside Fukushima Prefecture, Futaba has more residents who evacuated outside the prefecture. Although numerous factors affect risk perception and ITR to the place of previous residence, the impact of evacuation destination on risk perception remains unknown. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the impact of evacuation destination on radiation risk perception. In 2022, a survey was conducted on 404 evacuees aged >18 years. The responses were compared between groups outside and inside Fukushima using the chi-square test and multivariate logistic regression analysis. Significant relationships were found between the evacuation destination and risk perception of genetic effects in the next generation (odds ratio [OR] = 1.92, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.15-3.20) and of the health effects of radiation (OR = 1.76, 95%CI: 1.10-2.84), which were both higher in those who had evacuated outside Fukushima. These findings stress the importance of evacuation destination choice and information access for evacuees' risk perception. Enhanced education and support efforts are necessary to help evacuees not only in Fukushima but also throughout Japan.

Post-Disaster Restoration and Reconstruction Assessment of the Jiuzhaigou Lake Landscape and a Resilience Development Pathway.

The essence of post-disaster reconstruction is the restoration and rebirth of the affected areas. The earthquake hitting Jiuzhaigou was the first earthquake that had its epicenter in the World Natural Heritage located in China. Ecological restoration and landscape reconstruction are essential for the sustainable development of tourism. This study uses high-resolution remote sensing images to monitor and evaluate the post-disaster restoration and reconstruction process of the leading lakes in Jiuzhaigou. It was found that the lake water quality, vegetation, and road facilities have undergone moderate reconstruction. However, the restoration and reconstruction still faced severe challenges. The ecological environment's stability and balance are prerequisites for the sustainable development of the World Natural Heritage sites. This paper combines the "Build Back Better" concept that advocates risk reduction, scenic spot restoration, and efficient implementation to ensure Jiuzhaigou's restoration and sustainable development. It comes up with specific measures for the resilience development of Jiuzhaigou from the eight principles of overall planning, structural resilience, disaster prevention and mitigation, landscape facilities, social psychology, management mechanisms, policies and regulations, and monitoring and evaluation to provide a reference for the sustainable development of tourism.

Rethinking disaster utopia: the limits of conspicuous resilience for community-based recovery and adaptation.

While some communities appear to blossom in the wake of a disaster, others are left to struggle in the ashes. This paper introduces the concept of 'conspicuous resilience' to understand how emergent community-based recovery efforts privilege some needs while marginalising others, contributing to uneven forms of recovery. Drawing on a qualitative case study of the deadly Montecito debris flow in Southern California, United States, in January 2018, an in-depth examination of emergent community-based resilience efforts is gauged next to the social construction of unmet needs. Conspicuous acts of resilience centred around gaps in social and financial support as well as desires for protection from future debris flows. In defining and addressing needs, community-based interventions mirrored existing social inequalities and uneven relationships of power, promoting a false sense of equality and security while reinforcing private interests. To address the limits of conspicuous resilience, a justice-oriented politics of disaster recovery is needed.

From goods to goats: examining post-disaster livelihood recovery in the aftermath of the Nepal earthquake 2015.

Disasters can have substantial impacts on people's livelihoods in developing countries. Further, if the need for livelihood interventions is ignored or delayed, the crisis may trigger unexpected harmful consequences in the affected households in the aftermath. Therefore, restoring livelihoods should remain a priority in the post-disaster recovery process. However, such recoveries in rural contexts and developing countries, like Nepal, are complex as the livelihood restoration process is affected by serious spatial, socio-economic, and political factors. We employed qualitative research methods in four highly affected districts in the 2015 Nepal Earthquake (7.8 Mw) to examine post-disaster livelihoods recovery. Our paper critically assesses the humanitarian response based on the narratives and lived experiences of affected households. The findings show that humanitarian assistance was crucial in addressing several unmet needs of disaster-affected rural households in resource-poor settings in Nepal. However, the interventions were generally fragmented, insufficient, neoliberal led (forcing market dependencies), and largely business-as-usual in their orientation. Previous studies in Nepal paid insufficient attention to the goods provided to affected households in the name of recovery. Therefore, our paper scrutinises selected humanitarian objects, such as power tillers, and unpacks their political economy and effectiveness in local contexts. Further, our findings show that some livelihood policies reinforced the gap between the haves and have-nots, thereby reproducing pre-disaster inequalities in the post-disaster field.

Association of parental dissatisfaction and perceived inequality of post-disaster recovery process with child mental health.

INTRODUCTION: Unequal distribution of access to resources would often be highlighted after disasters, and may have impact on child mental health. We aimed to elucidate the association between perception of recovery process (dissatisfaction and perceived inequality) and child mental health. METHOD: Data from the Great East Japan Earthquake Follow-up for Children (GEJE-FC) study targeting children (aged 4-6 years at the time of the disaster) and their siblings and parents from three affected prefectures (Miyagi, Fukushima and Iwate) in Japan, from August 2012 to January 2018, were analyzed. Dissatisfaction and perceived inequality of recovery process, parental mental health (Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K6) and happiness) and social capital, and child mental health (Depression Self-Rating Scale for Children) were assessed via self-rated questionnaires. Longitudinal associations of dissatisfaction and perceived inequality and mental health were examined with the linear mixed modeling and structural equation modeling (n = 168 parent-child dyads). RESULT: Dissatisfaction and perceived inequality predicted lower parental happiness and more child depressive symptoms. Structural equation modeling revealed that parental mental health was associated with perceived inequality via lower social capital. Interestingly, perceived inequality was associated with child depressive symptom directly and indirectly through parental mental health and social capital. CONCLUSION: Dissatisfaction and perceived inequality of post-disaster recovery process were important predictors of child mental health. To mitigate the impact of disaster and to avoid damage on child mental health in the recovery process, policy makers should take into account survivors' dissatisfaction and perceived inequality of recovery process.

Social entrepreneurship, co-production, and post-disaster recovery.

Post-disaster recovery requires co-production; that is, the inputs of citizens are essential for successful community recovery to occur. Citizens contribute to post-disaster recovery by volunteering, taking on consultative and decision-making roles within their communities, and directly participating in post-disaster reconstruction efforts. Without meaning ful contributions from citizens-the intended beneficiaries-unilateral efforts by public officials and authorities will inevitably fail. This study shows that social entrepreneurs can thus play a critical role in spurring post-disaster recovery by facilitating co-production. It focuses on the role of social entrepreneurs after disasters and centres on one rural village, Giranchaur Namuna Basti in the Sindhupalchowk District of Nepal. Specifically, the study uses the case of the Dhurmus Suntali Foundation's Namuna village project in Giranchaur following the 7.8-magnitude earthquake that struck on 25 April 2015 to examine the pivotal role that social entrepreneurs assume in promoting voluntary activities, community engagement, and participation in post-disaster recovery efforts.

Nurturing Spiritual Resilience to Promote Post-disaster Community Recovery: The 2016 Alberta Wildfire in Canada.

The 2016 Alberta wildfire, the largest insured natural disaster in Canada, led to a mass evacuation of residents of Fort McMurray, a small city in northern Alberta. The wildfire resulted in significant damages to housing and community infrastructure. The entire community was displaced for several weeks. Post-disaster, community members experienced individual and collective trauma, and other negative mental health impacts in response to the significant losses and grief they endured. Spirituality has been found to be a major protective factor in facilitating resiliency and recovery following the experience of disaster. Nonetheless, little focus has been directed toward how spirituality can strengthen and empower community capacity and growth during post-disaster recovery. Our study explored various meanings and concerns, along with tools and strategies that helped to nurture spiritual resilience and well-being among residents of Fort McMurray following the Alberta wildfire. Data were collected through interviews and focus group discussions with community influencers working to support long-term recovery efforts in the city. Participants identified a number of spiritual resources such as a strong sense of belonging, a shared positive outlook, faith and hope, compassion, and sense of gratitude, which contributed to increased resilience and positive health and well-being and helped them to support families and communities in the post disaster recovery period. Our findings indicate that spiritual values and beliefs can play a significant role in building resilience and promoting individual and communal healing and recovery post-disaster. These findings have important implications for post-disaster recovery strategies, as they highlight the need to ensure supports for interventions and initiatives that strengthen a collective sense of identity and social cohesion, informed by communal norms and beliefs, including programs and resources which support opportunities for reflexivity to foster shared healing and ongoing recovery processes.

Types of coastlines and the evacuees' mental health: A repeated cross-sectional study in Northeast Japan.

Although the health risks and benefits of coastal areas have long been researched, these effects of the different types of coastlines have rarely been explored on the evacuees living near the coast, in a post-disaster context. Thus, this study aimed to explore, with the passing of years after a disaster, what kind of coastline is a useful public health resource as a post-disaster reconstruction approach in coastal environments that have suffered significantly from the tsunami disaster in northeast Japan in 2011. This study compared the evacuees' mental health based on proximity to the coast and the types of coastlines (artificial, semi-natural, and natural). Data were drawn from the Miyagi Prefectural Government surveys, which targeted almost all evacuees of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquakes and Tsunami (n = 96,203). We applied a pooled Poisson regression model to a repeated cross-sectional dataset of evacuees' mental health between 2012 and 2016. Moderate psychological distress, measured via the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K6) score, was the dependent variable, while proximity to the coast and type of coastline were the independent variables. The estimated main effects of type of coastline indicated that overall associations between K6 ≥5 and all types of coastlines within a 1.6 km buffer of participants' residential space were not statistically significant (p > 0.05). However, among types of coastlines, the interaction terms of semi-natural coastline × year (2015 and 2016) were significantly associated with lower incidence rate ratios (IRR), which decreased in 2015 and 2016 (IRR: 0.88, 95%CI: 0.79-0.98; IRR: 0.78, 95%CI: 0.68-0.90, respectively). Further, we computed the marginal effects of coastline types for each year to observe differences in the impact on moderate psychological distress depending on different accessible coastline types within a distance of 1.6 km from the participants' living space. We found that, after the revision of the coastal act in 2014, the moderate mental stress of participants who lived around semi-natural coastlines significantly tended to be low (dy/dx: -0.04, 95%CI: -0.08-0.01 in 2015; dy/dx: -0.07, 95%CI: -0.11-0.04 in 2016). This finding can encourage policymakers to manage coastal areas with green infrastructure in the post-disaster reconstruction sustainably.

The Use of Public Health Indicators to Assess Individual Happiness in Post-Disaster Recovery.

PURPOSE: Very few studies have examined the influential factors of survivors' feelings of happiness in the context of nuclear accidents. This paper aims to fill this gap with reference to the recovery process in Fukushima City following the 2011 Tohoku Earthquake Tsunami in Japan. METHODS: Open access data were sourced from the 2015 Social Survey on Living and Disaster Recovery (SSLDR) (N = 1439) of Fukushima citizens. Pearson's Chi-square Test and the t-test were employed to examine gender differences with regard to happiness and exploratory variables. Following this, a multiple linear regression analysis was conducted to investigate the determinants of happiness. RESULTS: The results showed that, compared to females, male respondents were unhappier and reported more property loss and less neighborhood connectedness. Individuals' mental and physical health and neighborhood connectedness were found to be significantly correlated with their happiness. However, the disaster-related variables of people's evaluation of recovery achievement, concerns around the health impacts of radiation, property loss in the disaster, and experiences of casualty, had no effects on happiness. CONCLUSION: These findings indicate that policies and countermeasures dealing with disaster recovery over the long term should continuously focus on health issues and social relationships.

Challenges to mobilising resources for disaster recovery and reconstruction: perspectives of the Haitian diaspora.

Diasporas and diaspora non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are increasingly important as resource lifelines to their home countries, yet the resources that they mobilise, the types of challenges that they face, and their coping mechanisms are not well explored or understood in the context of disaster recovery. To fill this knowledge gap, this study employed an inductive qualitative methodological approach, using interviews to comprehend the role played by Haitian diaspora NGOs after the catastrophic earthquake in 2010. It found that resources take four common forms: event fundraisers; financial and material donations from supporters; remittances; and volunteer labour. Challenges include an overreliance on diaspora donors, competition among NGOs, and what is perceived as inequitable funding practices towards diaspora NGOs. The findings provide insights centred on better coordination among diaspora NGOs, as well as between diaspora NGOs and other local and international NGOs and local governments and international institutions, to ensure more efficient delivery of services to survivors.

Learning from the rubble: the case of Christchurch, New Zealand, after the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes.

Learning after a disaster is crucial in creating more resilient places. However, many societies are repeatedly overwhelmed by disasters. This can be because of missed opportunities to learn in post-disaster settings or because of actions implemented that seem to be highly relevant to recovery in the short term, but potentially constrain aspirations in the longer term. This paper assesses learning processes among state and non-state actors and the ways in which these are bridged and scaled up to wider improvements in governance. Aiming to enrich understanding of post-disaster learning, it explores different actors' response actions after the earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2010 and 2011. On the one hand, 'learning by doing' is occurring, yet, on the other hand, systemic learning is hindered by mismatches between top-down steering and bottom-up initiatives. The study concludes that better linking and synergising of learning processes among different levels is vital for enhancing resilience in post-disaster societies.

Response to the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami disaster.

We revisited the lessons of the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake Tsunami disaster specifically on the response and impact, and discussed the paradigm shift of Japan's tsunami disaster management policies and the perspectives for reconstruction. Revisiting the modern histories of Tohoku tsunami disasters and pre-2011 tsunami countermeasures, we clarified how Japan's coastal communities have prepared for tsunamis. The discussion mainly focuses on structural measures such as seawalls and breakwaters and non-structural measures of hazard map and evacuation. The responses to the 2011 event are discussed specifically on the tsunami warning system and efforts to identify the tsunami impacts. The nation-wide post-tsunami survey results shed light on the mechanisms of structural destruction, tsunami loads and structural vulnerability to inform structural rehabilitation measures and land-use planning. Remarkable paradigm shifts in designing coastal protection and disaster mitigation measures were introduced, leading with a new concept of potential tsunami levels: Prevention (Level 1) and Mitigation (Level 2) levels according to the level of 'protection'. The seawall is designed with reference to Level 1 tsunami scenario, while comprehensive disaster management measures should refer to Level 2 tsunami for protection of human lives and reducing potential losses and damage. Throughout the case study in Sendai city, the proposed reconstruction plan was evaluated from the tsunami engineering point of view to discuss how the post 2011 paradigm was implemented in coastal communities for future disaster mitigation. The analysis revealed that Sendai city's multiple protection measures for Level 2 tsunami will contribute to a substantial reduction of the tsunami inundation zone and potential losses, combined with an effective tsunami evacuation plan.

Tears, fears and cheers: responses to the post-disaster school relocation policy in China.

This paper reports on the results of a qualitative study on the responses of Chinese school children in one junior middle school and their parents to China's post-disaster school relocation policy. The sample comprised 22 pairs of parent-child dyads and two pupils whose parents could not be contacted. The study results were reported using Chambers and Wedel's (2009) conceptual framework, which delineates the fundamental elements of a policy. Content analysis was used to generate themes related to policy elements, such as goals, benefits and services. Both repetitive themes and idiosyncratic perspectives were reported so as to present a diversity of views. Despite adjustment difficulties and administrative problems reported by the study participants, the policy attention given to the rapid restoration of formal schooling for children was generally appreciated. The move back to the new school was greeted with cheer.