A hierarchy of measures for infrastructure resilience – learning from post-disaster reconstruction in Christchurch, New Zealand

Abstract

Recent research into the concept of resilience has shown that it helps key players in urban development to assess and set priorities for resistance and recovery for disaster risk management. However, a competing issue within post-disaster recovery is managing the trade-offs between quickly restoring infrastructure services versus taking time to consider and consult on alternative options. Through an examination of the post-earthquake reconstruction in Christchurch, New Zealand, this paper considers infrastructure resilience by using a hierarchy of measures. This hierarchy shows how infrastructure resilience needs to be considered as a series of interventions in response to different levels of damage. It elucidates the varying nature of resilience measures, the decision-making processes required to implement them and constraints, chiefly in funding, that prevent wider application of such measures. This is an important consideration for defining and acting upon the opportunity for change created by a disaster. Furthermore, a broader examination of resilience in disaster risk management highlights that clarification is needed over what constitutes an appropriate response for community involvement in post-disaster infrastructure reconstruction.

Keywords:

• infrastructure resilience
• post-disaster reconstruction
• disaster risk reduction

Acknowledgements

We Thank Rod Cameron and the team at SCIRT for providing the detailed information that makes this research possible. We also extend thanks to others involved in the Christchurch recovery who gave their valuable time to interviews.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Autonomy is used here in terms of independence in approving a solution. Engineers are guided by certain technical standards and guidelines, thus, an individual engineer never has, in the strict sense, complete autonomy over the decisions that he/she makes.

2 For example, in May 2014, the Mayoral Flood Taskforce was established to identify the causes and find possible short-term solutions for the repeated flooding in parts of the city (Christchurch City Council 2014).

3 A map of the final five year programme for SCIRT's work can be sourced from www.scirt.co.nz.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Cambridge Commonwealth, European & International Trust. Supplementary funding was provided by the Earthquake Commission of New Zealand [Project No. 13/U657].