RAPID: Scalability and Sustainability in Uncertain Environments: Recovery from the Nepal Earthquakes of April 25 and May 12, 2015

了解灾后恢复过程对于建立具有抗灾能力的社区至关重要。随着灾害事件发生的频率、成本和范围的增加，将此类事件的恢复规划纳入最新的减灾和应对计划的必要性日益增强。这种综合努力在各级政府管辖范围内都是必不可少的：市、县/区/区、州/省、国家和国际。这样的规划将确定加速社区累积风险暴露的条件，这种风险暴露可以中断或减缓的点，以及能够最有效和快速地使受损社区恢复正常运作的步骤序列。开发一种可行的灾后社区恢复模式代表着一种全球需求，这一需求与新奥尔良等美国城市尤其相关，这些城市在2005年毁灭性的飓风和洪水过后十年仍在与恢复作斗争。其他美国城市，如西雅图和洛杉矶，面临反复发生的地震风险，而迈阿密和休斯顿预计未来几十年伴随着海平面上升的破坏性风暴。查尔斯顿既要应对飓风，又要应对地震风险。在不同规模的业务中预测风险阈值，并规划适当的风险减少和恢复机制，是设计具有抗灾能力的可持续社区的基本战略，这是国家的当务之急。这项仔细执行的快速反应研究(RAPID)研究将显示在面临持续风险的环境中导致可持续恢复和复原力的决策临界点，反之，社区累积的风险暴露有可能滑回引发其他危险的脆弱条件，导致加速风险和潜在灾难。先发制人的恢复计划不仅将使处于危险中的社区受益，而且将使整个国家受益。确定使社区能够以可持续的方式迅速从破坏性事件中恢复的标准是一项重大的智力挑战。这项关于灾后恢复的研究将基于尼泊尔地震风险的实际情况，以及将减轻多种灾害风险纳入灾后恢复进程作为对可持续社区的投资所涉及的问题。这项研究将在2015年7月1日至2016年6月30日的一年时间内，考察灾后恢复作为一个在多个组织和司法决策尺度上发生的过程。它将特别分析将信息技术作为使社区参与自身恢复的主要工具的使用情况。该模型借鉴了为组织决策研究提供信息的三个主要概念：集体行动，即人们如何学习合作；信息系统，即信息如何在人和组织内部和组织之间有效流动，以指导知情行动；以及行动领域，即领导的价值观和个人榜样如何在不确定的环境中塑造行动。这项研究将使用不同的分析方法，包括贝叶斯影响图和系统动力学，以跟踪信息流动、影响、技术变化、知识类型、技能水平和绩效差距，这些都是一个正在从灾难中恢复的社会的特征。经过精心开发的这一模式将对处于危险中的社区产生全球影响。

Understanding recovery processes after disaster is critical to building disaster resilient communities. As the frequency, cost, and scope of disaster events increase, the need escalates for incorporating planning for recovery from such events into updated plans for mitigation and response. This integrated effort is essential at all levels of governmental jurisdiction: municipal, county/district/regional, state/provincial, national, and international. Such planning will identify the conditions that accelerate a community's cumulative exposure to risk, the points at which this exposure can be interrupted or slowed, and the sequence of steps that can most effectively and quickly restore a damaged community to functional operation. Developing a viable model for community recovery after disaster represents a global need, one that is especially relevant to US cities like New Orleans that is still struggling with recovery ten years after the devastating hurricane and flood of 2005. Other US cities, like Seattle and Los Angeles, face recurring seismic risk, while Miami and Houston anticipate destructive storms accompanied by sea level rise in the coming decades. Charleston copes with both hurricanes and seismic risk. Anticipating thresholds of risk as they accrue over time at different scales of operation, and planning appropriate mechanisms for risk reduction and recovery are basic strategies for designing sustainable communities that are resilient to hazards, a national imperative. This Rapid Response Research (RAPID) study, carefully executed, will show the threshold points of decision that lead to sustainable recovery and resilience in environments exposed to continuing risk, and, conversely, the points at which a community's cumulative exposure to risk threatens to slide back into vulnerable conditions that trigger other hazards, leading to accelerated risk and potential disaster. Pre-emptive recovery planning will benefit not only the community at risk, but the entire nation.Determining the criteria that enable communities to recover from destructive events quickly in sustainable ways represents a major intellectual challenge. This study of disaster recovery will be based on the actual context of seismic risk in Nepal, and the issues that are involved in incorporating mitigation of multihazard risk into disaster recovery processes as investment for a sustainable community. The study will examine recovery from disaster as a process that occurs at multiple scales of organizational and jurisdictional decision making over a one-year period, from July 1, 2015 to June 30, 2016. It will analyze especially the uses of information technology as a primary tool for engaging communities in their own recovery. The model draws on three major concepts that have informed the study of organizational decision making: collective action, or how people learn to work together; information systems, or how information flows effectively within and among people and organizations to guide informed action; and fields of action, or how values and personal examples of leadership shape actions in uncertain environments. The study will use different methods of analysis, including Bayesian influence diagrams and system dynamics, to track the flow of information, influence, technical change, types of knowledge, level of skills, and gaps in performance that characterize a society recovering from disaster. The model, carefully developed, will have a global impact for communities at risk.