Quantitative assessment of post‐disaster housing recovery: a case study of Punta Gorda, Florida, after Hurricane Charley

Abstract

Quantitative assessment of post-disaster housing recovery is critical to enhancing understanding of the process and improving the decisions that shape it. Nevertheless, few comprehensive empirical evaluations of post-disaster housing recovery have been conducted, and no standard measurement methods exist. This paper presents a quantitative assessment of housing recovery in Punta Gorda, Florida, United States, following Hurricane Charley of August 2004, including an overview of the phases of housing recovery, progression of recovery over time, alternative trajectories of recovery, differential recovery, incorporation of mitigation, and effect on property sales. The assessment is grounded in a conceptual framework that considers the recovery of both people and place, and that emphasises recovery as a process, not as an endpoint. Several data sources are integrated into the assessment--including building permits, remotely sensed imagery, and property appraiser data--and their strengths and limitations are discussed with a view to developing a standardised method for measuring and monitoring housing recovery.

An interdisciplinary system dynamics model for post-disaster housing recovery

“…As the recovery timeline transitions into temporary and long-term housing, the presence of temporary shelters in only a portion of neighborhoods can be an indicator of differential recovery (Liel et al, 2013). The number or percentage of residents living in temporary housing Boano, 2009;Hwang, 2011;, the location of the temporary housing (Paul & Che, 2011;Green, Bates, & Smyth, 2007), the time spent in temporary housing (Paul & Che, 2011), and the type of temporary housing (Rathfon et al, 2013) can also indicate the progress of housing recovery. These variables gave us specific motivation to develop a scalable model which would be able to capture disparities across a community.…”

Measuring disaster recovery: bouncing back or reaching the counterfactual state?

“…The speedy recovery process aims to minimise interruptions to business operations, to restore damaged properties, and to re-establish broken infrastructure to permit the resumption of normal activities (Alesch et al, 2001). Housing recovery is considered to be a process, whereby housing units follow a trajectory from a damaged state to a recovered state (Rathfon et al, 2012). Since merely returning to pre-disaster conditions could imply that the vulnerability conditions that existed prior to the disaster have not been reduced, the refined strands of this approach include mitigation enhancements to decrease such vulnerability (Blaikie et al, 1994;Enarson and Morrow, 1998;Mileti, 1999;Cutter and Emrich, 2006;Olshansky, 2006;Rubin, 2009).…”

“…These modes track recovery in particular times and locations and are quite localised (Stevenson et al, 2010). In their assessment of housing recovery following Hurricane Charley in Punta Gorda, Florida, in August 2004, Rathfon et al (2012) combine remote sensing techniques with building permits and property appraiser data to gauge the trajectory of recovery of damaged buildings.…”

Monitoring and Assessing Post-Disaster Tourism Recovery Using Geotagged Social Media Data

“…Brown et al [27] investigated the recovery status after the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake in China based on both satellite images and field surveys (capturing detailed georeferenced records of the recovery through photographs, video, and observations). Resident interviews have also been used as a method to monitor and assess the recovery of Punta Gorda (Florida, the United States) after hurricane Charley in 2004 [28]. McCarthy and Hanson [29] compiled and analyzed authoritative building permit data, census, and damage assessment data for three counties hit by the 2005 hurricane Katrina in the United States to describe the degree of their housing recovery.…”