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Factors affecting earthquake recovery: the Yao’an earthquake of China

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Abstract

Households vary in their ability to deal with disasters, and this may lead to different recovery results. Aiming to examine this differentiation, this paper studied the 2009 Yao’an earthquake in China. Surveys of 200 destroyed rural households were conducted in field investigations and follow-ups at 1 month, 1 year, and 1.5 years after the earthquake. The results showed a clear difference in recovery, the households observably being classified into five groups. These are the O group, which has different recovery time and economic cost from the other four; and the special group, comprising E L T O and E O T L (vulnerable during recovery); E H T O (strong during recovery); and E L T S (neither vulnerable nor strong). Logistic regression analysis revealed that differentiation in recovery patterns arose from the combined effect of demographic factors and external assistance provided to households. Lower income is the root cause of vulnerability in some households during the recovery process. However, other factors cause recovery differences between the two vulnerable groups, causing the economic recovery cost of the E L T O group to be lower, and the recovery time of the E O T L group to be longer. There was consensus that external assistance had an impact on all households. The more provided and the earlier it arrived, the lower the cost for recovery and the shorter the recovery time. This study shows that research on group differentiation of recovery is useful in understanding post-earthquake recovery processes and calls for taking group differentiation considerations into account in post-disaster recovery resource allocation practices.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported primarily by the National Key Technology R & D Program of Twelfth-Five Year of China (No. 2012BAK10B03), the National Natural Science Funds (No. 40701062), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 2009SAT-10, No. 2009SD-20). Several research assistants contributed to this paper, including those at the Ministry of Civil Affairs National Disaster Reduction Center and the undergraduates who took part in the follow-up surveys.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Earth Surface Processes and Resource Ecology, Beijing Normal University, No.19, XinJieKouWai St., HaiDian District, Beijing, 100875, People’s Republic of China

    Ying Wang

  2. Key Laboratory of Environmental Change and Natural Disaster of MOE, Beijing Normal University, No.19, XinJieKouWai St., HaiDian District, Beijing, 100875, People’s Republic of China

    Hao Chen & Juan Li

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  1. Ying Wang
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  2. Hao Chen
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  3. Juan Li
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Correspondence to Ying Wang.

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Wang, Y., Chen, H. & Li, J. Factors affecting earthquake recovery: the Yao’an earthquake of China. Nat Hazards 64, 37–53 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-012-0224-3

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11069-012-0224-3

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