Measuring resilience and recovery

This paper reports systematic attempts to measure and assess recovery after recent major earthquakes. The aim is to compare different methods, both quantitative and qualitative, and to assess which are more cost effective rather than detail the process of recovery after particular events. The paper also discusses how resilience relates to recovery. The methods trialled are all capable of measuring the speed, and to some extent the quality, of recovery, but the merits of each depends on the resources available and the level of detail or precision required. The recommended approach is to use the methods in combination. Specifically satellite imagery analysis can be combined with ground survey, social audit and published data to develop a spatial-temporal geo-database that can be used to monitor recovery. To date, however, it would appear to be challenging to measure resilience. An approach might be to attempt to isolate the factors underlying resilience and focus on measuring these. This might be achieved by analysing recovery after a wide variety of events and building models of resilience based on these factors. These predictions of resiliencey for a wide range of countries at risk might then be compared with the speed and quality recovery after future events.