Measuring and Characterizing Community Recovery to Earthquake: the Case of 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake, China

Abstract. Our world is prone to more frequent, deadly and costly earthquake disasters, which are increasingly uncertain and complex due to the rapid environmental and socio-economic changes occurring at multiple scales. There is an urgent need to recover rapidly and effectively for community after earthquake disasters. To enhance community recovery, it is necessary to have a good initial understanding of what it is, its determinants and how it can be measured, maintained and improved. So this article proposes the concept of community recovery as the capacity to recover and rebuild after the earthquake disasters by considering the original perspective of recovery. And we develop a new quantitative approach to measure community recovery to earthquake from four dimensions (population, economic, building, and infrastructure) by extending the concepts of recovery triangle. Taking the community of Wenchuan as the example to test our mathematical model and compare different recovery levels of four dimensions under the situation of Wenchuan Earthquake, the results can help the policy makers identify the low-recovery dimensions of Wenchuan to enhance post-disaster recovery and reconstruction efforts, and address the vital importance of local government in improving the post-disaster recovery.