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Editorial

Towards an earthquake-resilient world: from post-disaster reconstruction to pre-disaster prevention

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Pages 269-275 | Received 16 Jun 2018, Accepted 05 Jul 2018, Published online: 26 Jul 2018

ABSTRACT

Destructive earthquakes in urban or rural areas around the world have caused severe damage to local societies. Pre-disaster prevention and post-disaster reconstruction can significantly reduce the impact of earthquakes on communities. To explore the popular research topics and trends in this area, CiteSpace was used to develop a knowledge map visualization. It was found that the main research into earthquake disaster prevention and reconstruction has been focused on disaster risk reduction planning, disaster mitigation knowledge, participatory disaster governance, and community resilience building. In this Special Issue, there were six distinctive earthquake disaster research papers that covered scientific, social, and institutional aspects. It was concluded that to reduce the effects of earthquake disasters, an interdisciplinary research approach and systems thinking is needed. The investigation also revealed that there has been a paradigm shift from post-disaster reconstruction to pre-disaster prevention to build community and urban resilience.

1. Introduction to this Special Issue

Earthquakes are a devastating yet common natural disasters that result in billions of dollars of property damage and a significant loss of life. In the past decade, the world has seen several devastating earthquakes: the 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake, the 2010 Haitian Earthquake, the 2011 Great Eastern Japanese Earthquake, and the 2015 Nepalese Earthquake; all of which have resulted in significant damage to buildings and local eco-system environments as well as significant injuries, loss of life, and psychological trauma. In recent years, there has been an increased focus on earthquake research, which has raised both academic and societal awareness of the need to reduce the effects of potential earthquakes (Tucker, Citation2013).

However, Environmental Hazards, as an innovative, interdisciplinary, and international research journal addressing the full range of hazards, has not yet had a Theme Issue on this crucial subject. As long-term researchers on the social and economic aspects of earthquake disasters, we were pleased to be invited to arrange this Special Issue. At the request of the Chief Editor, this Special Issue has been created to tap into some of this research. Our aim, and his, has been to explore the evolutionary trajectory, showcase the latest achievements, and determine the potential of earthquake disaster research.

In this respect, we systemically reviewed the relevant literature and carefully summarized important research areas in this field, so as to give a balanced catalog of earthquake disaster prevention and reconstruction research. From last June to this June, we solicited contributions from a number of scholars in different parts of the world; and after several rounds of strict review and tough selection, the Special Issue has been finalized. These selected representative articles, we believe, bring out new ideas in earthquake disaster research.

2. Evolutionary trajectory of earthquake disaster prevention and reconstruction research

Previous studies on earthquake disaster prevention have focused on aspects such as mechanisms, regulations, and critical factors. For example, Keefer, Neumayer, and Plümper (Citation2011) analyzed the links between institutions and earthquake mortality, and highlighted the incentives for political decision-makers to respond to the earthquake threats. Edrissi, Poorzahedy, Nassiri, and Nourinejad (Citation2013) presented a formula to ensure the coordination of three main agencies: the building renovation sector, the emergency response sector and the transportation sector; and proposed a novel heuristic approach to solve the respective sub-problems. Nakamura, Umeki, and Kato (Citation2017) examined the importance of communication and other relevant factors in community-based disaster prevention meetings, and found that an effective relationship and communication with local communities was an essential factor for disaster prevention. Earthquake disaster prevention is vital, especially in areas where earthquakes frequently occur.

However, as large devastating earthquakes often result in catastrophic damage to almost all earthquake-impacted regions, post-disaster reconstruction is often necessary, which can directly influence disaster recovery. To fill the research gap on estimating the time needed for reconstruction, Sun and Xu (Citation2011) explored the time–cost relationship in the Wenchuan earthquake reconstruction. In addition, the management of information and communication during post-disaster reconstruction is also vital (Tagliacozzo, Citation2018). Huang, Chen, and Liu (Citation2012) presented a post-earthquake analysis on secondary geological hazards and provided recommendations on risk mitigation for mass reconstruction. Therefore, research on the prevention and reconstruction of earthquake disasters can greatly assist communities living in seismic belts and provide ideas for more effective post-disaster responses after an earthquake.

To explore the evolutionary trajectory of earthquake disaster prevention and reconstruction research, CiteSpace, a visual document analysis software, was employed to develop a knowledge visualization map. The search string ‘earthquake prevention and reconstruction’ was used in the Web of Science database to search for and retrieve relevant articles from 1996 to 2018, from which 4761 articles were identified. To ensure an adequate correlation for data cleaning, TS= (earthquake disaster*) AND (TS=(prevention*) OR TS=(reconstruction*)) was used as the title word retrieval to exclude other databases and eliminate redundancies, thereby reducing the total to 1858 articles.

Over recent decades, earthquake disaster research has become divided across many fields. presents a visualization of the associated clusters with the automatically created labels. Only highly cited papers in the major clusters are shown, from which the primary terms emerged. The prominent research on earthquake prevention and reconstruction was focused on prediction, simulation approaches, community resilience, psychological trauma, and post-disaster recovery. Taking community resilience as an example, earthquake prevention, disaster mitigation, and emergency center management were observed to play significant role in developing urban resilience. Earthquake simulation research was found to focus on methods such as decision theory, social and behavioral science, systems methodology, impact assessments, and socio-ecological systems, and post-disaster recovery research has tended to focus on policy-making, built environments, reconstruction management, disaster resilience, and community participation.

Figure 1. Prominent research scope for earthquake disaster prevention and reconstruction.

Figure 1. Prominent research scope for earthquake disaster prevention and reconstruction.

Popular research topics tend to change over time. shows a timeline view of the earthquake-related research, which gives a better idea of the evolutionary trajectory. The selected years were from 1996 to 2018, and the corresponding research foci are labeled. From 2013 to 2018, for example, it can be seen that research tended to be more focused on policy in 2013 but on crisis communication and collaboration in 2018, with the study trajectory passing through research on community resilience, meta-analyses, education, and governance, indicating that the public was becoming more concerned about what they can do to perform well in both earthquake disaster prevention and reconstruction after the government has taken the appropriate policy-making, financial support, and educational assurance measures.

Figure 2. Timeline view of related research.

Figure 2. Timeline view of related research.

In this section, therefore, the most popular earthquake disaster prevention and reconstruction topics are identified from an analysis of the CiteSpace results. A preliminary literature system analysis indicates that there has been diverse foci: from a scientific perspective, disaster risk reduction planning and knowledge for disaster mitigation appear to be important; from a social perspective, the role and performance of nonprofit and private organizations, and collaborative network and collective performance have been widely discussed; from an institutional perspective, participatory disaster governance and disaster management adaptive systems have been the most dominant areas; and from an interdisciplinary perspective, social vulnerability reduction and community resilience building have received the most attention.

3. A brief review of papers in this Special Issue

Based on systematic literature research, active scholars in earthquake disaster field were identified. In order to show the mainstream directions and latest researches in this field, many researchers were invited to submit their manuscripts. Through strict review process, six papers are eventually selected. They are discussed that have significantly contributed to earthquake disaster research, which are divided into three main areas: scientific, social, and institutional.

As the genesis of an earthquake is intrinsically related to the geodynamic processes, Khan. provides a short but robust literature review on the geo-genetic status of earthquake-related hazards from a geoscientific perspective, proposes a mitigation approach, and suggests that scientific studies be conducted as part of pre-disaster physical planning and building measures and pre- and post-disaster risk management. The importance of enhancing social physical resilience is also emphasized by Tang et al., which reviews the causes of vulnerabilities, establishes a conceptual model for natural disaster analysis, and validates this model using the 2008 Wenchuan earthquake. The insights gained have significant theoretical and practical implications in assisting vulnerable communities adapt to and mitigate natural hazards. To inform communities trying to prepare themselves for a rapid return to the situation before the disaster, Amir et al. assesses the earthquake resilience capabilities in Yasuj, Iran, through an evaluation of the social, economic, institutional, and physical-environment dimensions. The results show that social capital and an awareness of social resilience are more important in predicting resilience, bringing important enlightenment to earthquake disaster prevention.

Special topics, such as the role schools have in helping communities cope with earthquake disasters by reducing the earthquake consequences through better preparedness are also discussed. Mutch highlights the pre- and post-disaster importance of schools to the community through a four-year empirical study of five school communities that had been hit by the 2010–2011 earthquake sequences in the Canterbury region of New Zealand. The results demonstrate the crucial and wide role that schools play in supporting local communities to build and sustain resilience as part of ongoing community cohesion and connectedness to provide the society with better preparedness when major disasters occur.

A critical topic is the long-term influence of devastating earthquakes on civil societies in developing countries. Yuan et al. argue that by promoting local community participation in India, Iran, and Pakistan, facilitating extensive non-government organization (NGO) cooperation, and streamlining state–civil society relationships, an enabling environment can be developed to further sustain the advances made by a civil society after a disaster.

Finally, in an in-depth discussion on public participation, Xu et al. see community-based disaster risk reduction as the foundation of the disaster management system pyramid and critical to the success of ‘sustainable hazard mitigation’. They examine public participation in an NGO-oriented Community for Disaster Prevention and Mitigation (N-CDPM) in the period between two earthquakes as a multi-stage problem based on multiple collaborative stakeholder perspectives, which provides a novel research perspective on CDPM operations in multiple earthquake regions and significantly advances research into collaborations between the government and public and the relationships with the public in an N-CDPM.

Though there have been significant developments into earthquake disaster prevention and reconstruction, challenges still exist. For pre-disaster prevention, there needs to be a breakthrough in earthquake prediction accuracy as there are many changeable related factors. As post-disaster reconstruction is a complicated and lengthy process with many challenges such as the urgent need for finance, food, and resources as well as invisible and hard to recover aspects such as psychological distress, further studies are needed. In a word, as the challenges are self-evident, additional research efforts are required.

As public involvement is critical to building a resilient community, and there are numerous stakeholders involved in disaster management after a destructive earthquake, disaster researchers have two important missions. The first is to assist policy-makers better guide the public in taking part in earthquake disaster prevention and reconstruction, and the second is to facilitate an effective multi-stakeholder collaboration process for pre-disaster prevention and post-disaster reconstruction.

4. Paradigm shift in earthquake disaster research

There has been a century of disaster research using social science approaches since Samuel Prince published his doctoral dissertation Catastrophe and Social Change in 1920. Although a wealth of scientific knowledge exists about the causes and effects of earthquake hazards, and the technical methodology is well advanced to reduce the impact, earthquakes continue to have devastating consequences, causing wide destruction of infrastructure, lifelines, and other facilities in both prepared and less prepared communities (Momani, Citation2013). Earthquake events are classified as disasters when they intersect with social systems; that is, earthquake disasters are essentially ‘social in nature’ (Quarantelli, Citation1989). Therefore, to investigate the prevention and reconstruction issues related to the impact on and the response by socio-cultural systems and their functioning, a socio-economic perspective is required. Consequently, as identified from the CiteSpace results, an earthquake disaster prevention and reconstruction research focus on socio-economic-related issues has become increasingly mainstream.

Major earthquakes are experienced in the world every few years, many of which have major losses and increase long-term community anxiety in disaster-prone areas. The many catastrophic earthquakes in the last decade have focused on the need for better pre-disaster prevention efforts and better coordinated post-disaster reconstruction to ensure the long-term development of affected communities and areas (Lu, Xu, Wang, & Xu, Citation2018; Xu & Lu, Citation2012). Rather than simply waiting for destructive earthquakes and then attempting to respond with post-earthquake reconstruction projects, planners and decision-makers need to estimate regional earthquake vulnerabilities and develop pre-disaster plans to build more resilient communities and cities (Lu & Xu, Citation2015). Therefore, pre-disaster planning for post-disaster recovery is a needed research direction (Berke & Campanella, Citation2006).

Reality needs and innovation are the two sides of post-disaster reconstruction. In recent decades, extreme disasters, especially devasting earthquakes, have occurred more frequently, and disaster responses have become more complicated as in the aftermath of an earthquake disaster, there is significant pressure to act quickly. Time pressure and communication and transport difficulties in the post-disaster environment have added to the challenges of post-disaster reconstruction. To overcome these challenges, disaster management needs to be reframed to be seen as complex systems engineering because reducing the risks of earthquake disasters needs interdisciplinary research and systems thinking to balance pre-disaster preparedness and post-disaster relief. Pre-disaster planning can significantly reduce disaster recovery periods and increase the resilience of the buildings reconstructed in the post-disaster period; that is, the quality of the reconstruction and rehabilitation work depends largely on pre-disaster planning to reduce the vulnerability to future hazard events. There is a practical need for and an increasing tendency toward pre-disaster prevention. This need is leading to a paradigm shift in disaster research, which could reshape past disaster analysis and should redirect future research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Major Bidding Program of the National Social Science Foundation of China [grant number 17&ZDA286]; the National Natural Science Foundation of China [grant number 71704124].

Reference

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