The recent successive hazards such as drought, bushfires and COVID-19, have shown disasters occur consecutively and take longer than initially anticipated. Disaster recovery systems are conceptualised as lifecycles where one phase follows after previous phase has completed, in one system. This is no longer suitable, because long-term recovery may need different system.
The research questions are:
- What is the gap in literature with regard to understanding the systems for long-term recovery?
- What is defined as goals of long-term recovery?
- What is the gap in existing systems in coping with long-term recovery and what needs to be improved?
Existing recovery systems needs to adapt to the reality of crisis age where recovery often takes longer than a decade and the response process to each event overlaps. Furthermore the long-term recovery is a complex system which involves a complex set of policy related problems that requires different approaches. This project will develop a new paradigm for long-term recovery, applying systems thinking approaches.
The significance of this research is that it;
- Identifies where system traps exist in long-term process of recovery, and
- Conceptualise the systems resilience which embeds pre-disaster mitigation into the complex system of long-term recovery
