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设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，将灾后恢复规划纳入最新的减灾和应对计划的必要性也随之增加。这一综合努力在各级政府管辖范围内至关重要：市、县/区/区域、州/省、国家和国际。 这种规划将确定加速社区累积风险的条件、可以中断或减缓这种风险的点，以及可以最有效和最迅速地使受损社区恢复正常运作的步骤顺序。开发一个可行的灾后社区恢复模式代表了全球的需求，这与新奥尔良等美国城市特别相关，新奥尔良在2005年毁灭性的飓风和洪水发生十年后仍在努力恢复。其他美国城市，如西雅图和洛杉矶，面临着反复发生的地震风险，而迈阿密和休斯顿预计在未来几十年内将发生破坏性风暴，伴随着海平面上升。查尔斯顿同时应对飓风和地震风险。预测在不同业务规模上随着时间的推移而累积的风险阈值，并规划适当的减少风险和恢复机制，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。这一快速反应研究（RAPID）研究，认真执行，将显示阈值点的决定，导致可持续的恢复和弹性的环境中暴露于持续的风险，并反过来说，在点上，一个社区的累积暴露于风险有可能滑回脆弱的条件，触发其他危害，导致加速风险和潜在的灾难。 先发制人的恢复规划不仅有利于处于危险中的社区，而且有利于整个国家。确定使社区能够以可持续的方式从破坏性事件中迅速恢复的标准是一项重大的智力挑战。这项灾后恢复研究将以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为基础。该研究将考察从灾难中恢复作为一个过程，在2015年7月1日至2016年6月30日的一年时间内，在多个组织和司法决策层面上进行。它将特别分析如何利用信息技术作为使社区参与其自身恢复的主要工具。该模型借鉴了组织决策研究的三个主要概念：集体行动，即人们如何学会协同工作;信息系统，即信息如何在人与组织之间有效流动，以指导知情行动;行动领域，即领导力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、影响、技术变革、知识类型、技能水平以及表现出灾后恢复社会特征的差距。精心制定的这一模式将对面临风险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.