Resilience, Entropy, and Efficiency in Crisis Management: The January 12, 2010, Haiti Earthquake

Abstract

The transition from disaster to recovery represents a major challenge to decision makers who seek to build a stronger, sustainable future while they cope with losses and destruction from an extreme event. Decision makers encounter a dynamic environment in which they must balance the tensions between entropy and efficiency in their search for resilience as they seek to maintain sustainable operations in a region exposed to recurring risk. In communities that have experienced disaster, the initial response is a strong mobilization of resources and personnel focused on clear goals of saving lives, protecting property, and meeting immediate needs. The urgency of danger directs the priorities for action, and organizations and individuals voluntarily act cooperatively to meet immediate needs, representing a first step toward resilience. Yet, the resources and energy committed to a shared effort to meet immediate needs generated by the extreme event slowly give way to entropy, or the dissipation of attention, energy, and resources that leads to a consequent loss of efficiency in risk reduction. The deteriorating situation leads to new calls for efficiency to regain resilience. The evolving process represents a dynamic among resilience, entropy, and efficiency that shapes the community's capacity to manage risk from exposure to recurring hazards. It is largely driven by interactions among organizations participating in disaster operations, their exchange of timely, valid information, and their capacity for learning and adaptation, as well as gaps in cognition and action. We explore the tensions among resilience, entropy, and efficiency in an analysis of interactions among local, regional, national, and international organizations operating in response to the January 12, 2010, Haiti Earthquake. Three types of data are used to analyze patterns of interaction among the organizations: 1) content analysis of newspapers; 2) documentary reports by professional organizations; and 3) semistructured interviews with policy makers operating in Haiti. In analyzing the networks of organizations operating in disaster operations, we document the response system that emerged during the first three weeks following the earthquake, January 12‐February 3, 2010. We conclude that timely intervention in information flow can be used to minimize entropy, increase efficiency, and strengthen resilience in a disaster‐stricken society's transition from response to recovery.

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