Characterizing multi-event disaster resilience

This paper presents an approach for providing a quantitative measure of resilience in the presence of multiple related disaster events. It extends the concepts of the resilience triangle and predicted disaster resilience by considering the tradeoffs between multiple criteria for each individual sub-event, as well as for an entire multi-event situation. The focus of the research is on sudden-onset disasters, and on the initial impact of each sub-event as well as the amount of time available to work towards recovery of the system before the next sub-event occurs. A mathematical model is developed for the new resilience measure, along with an approach for graphically representing the relationships between the different criteria. An example is then provided of using the new approach to compare the relative resilience of different scenarios under a representative multi-event disaster situation. The results demonstrate that characterizing multi-event resilience analytically can ultimately provide a great depth of information and thus support better disaster planning and mitigation. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.