A hierarchy of measures for infrastructure resilience – learning from post-disaster reconstruction in Christchurch, New Zealand

Abstract

Recent research into the concept of resilience has shown that it helps key players in urban development to assess and set priorities for resistance and recovery for disaster risk management. However, a competing issue within post-disaster recovery is managing the trade-offs between quickly restoring infrastructure services versus taking time to consider and consult on alternative options. Through an examination of the post-earthquake reconstruction in Christchurch, New Zealand, this paper considers infrastructure resilience by using a hierarchy of measures. This hierarchy shows how infrastructure resilience needs to be considered as a series of interventions in response to different levels of damage. It elucidates the varying nature of resilience measures, the decision-making processes required to implement them and constraints, chiefly in funding, that prevent wider application of such measures. This is an important consideration for defining and acting upon the opportunity for change created by a disaster. Furthermore, a broader examination of resilience in disaster risk management highlights that clarification is needed over what constitutes an appropriate response for community involvement in post-disaster infrastructure reconstruction.

Sociotechnical Resilience: A Preliminary Concept

“…Further, they have also characterized resilience variably as an outcome or process, an intrinsic or relational capability, a constituent of the system structure or the functional characteristic, among other binaries. In further developments, resilience scholars have devised methods to quantify aspects of resilience along with framing intervention strategies . A broad range of resilience indicators and measuring tools have been developed, for instance, in seismic resilience of communities, infrastructure under system stress, resilience in transport networks over a variety of factors, resilience using graph‐theory tools, and stochastic methods using Monte Carlo simulations, among other recent developments.…”

“…In further developments, resilience scholars have devised methods to quantify aspects of resilience (21,22) along with framing intervention strategies. (23) A broad range of resilience indicators and measuring tools have been developed, for instance, in seismic resilience of communities, (24) infrastructure under system stress, (25) resilience in transport networks over a variety of factors, (26) resilience using graph-theory tools, (27) and stochastic methods using Monte Carlo simulations, (28) among other recent developments. These approaches to quantification stem from the various meta-theoretical assumptions and views of resilience already prevalent in the resilience research community in matters related to sociotechnical systems.…”

Attributes, challenges and future directions of community resilience

“…The main concerns of these studies are China's snow disaster in 2008, the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004, and the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami in 2011. Australian and New Zealand studies focus on the Christchurch earthquake in 2011 (MacAskill and Guthrie, 2015). Research in Africa and the Middle East is focused on heat waves and earthquake disasters, mainly in Turkey and South Africa (Harte et al, 2009;Orhan, 2014).…”

Resilience Analysis of Countries under Disasters Based on Multisource Data

“…1, the red box shows the primary indices and the black box shows the secondary indices. Primary indices include disaster, (12,13) personal attributes, (14)(15)(16)(17)(18) economics, (17)(18)(19)(20) infrastructure, (17,18,(21)(22)(23)(24) education, (17,18,25,26) and occupation. (11,18,27) After further classification, 38 secondary indices are listed, shown in Fig.…”