PrintRecovery
In the recovery phase of the emergency management cycle, policymakers aim to repair, reconstruct, and restore what has been lost during a disaster. Recovery policies and activities also ideally aim to reduce future vulnerability to natural hazards, so that renewal might result in a physical and socio-economic environment that looks and functions somewhat different when compared to the original community. This is where recovery and mitigation may overlap in the cycle. During recovery, for example, city planning experts may call for rethinking how a community wiped out by a storm surge or tsunami is designed so that it has greater resilience than the original. Rebuilding employing methods designed so that the buildings can better withstand a storm surge – such as elevating the buildings above base flood elevation - would be the simplest example. Moving buildings to a safer location is also an option. There are many other details and considerations that can be incorporated, some of which were discussed in the Managed Retreat and Smart Building modules of the course. Consensus is recently being reached that building back communities exactly as they were is not the wisest path to take.