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

. Our world is prone to more 1 frequent, deadly and costly earthquake 2 disasters, which are increasingly uncertain and 3 complex due to the rapid environmental and 4 socio-economic changes occurring at multiple 5 scales. There is an urgent need to recover 6 rapidly and effectively for community after 7 earthquake disasters. To enhance community 8 recovery, it is necessary to have a good initial 9 understanding of what it is, its determinants 10 and how it can be assessed, maintained and 11 improved. Considering the original 12 perspective of recovery, this article proposes 13 the concept of community recovery as the 14 capacity to recover and rebuild after the 15 earthquake disasters. And this paper presented 16 a framework for defining community recovery 17 and specifying quantitative measures to assess 18 it that can serve as focus for comprehensive 19 characterization of the earthquake problem to 20 establish needs and priorities. The framework 21 integrates those measures into the four 22 dimensions of community 23 recovery-population, economic, building, and 24 infrastructure. Taking the community of 25 Wenchuan as the example to test our 26 mathematical model and compare different 27 recovery levels of four dimensions under the 28 situation of Wenchuan Earthquake, the results 29 can help Chinese Central Government to 30 assess and measure the recovery capacity and 31 performance of local government officials of 32 Wenchuan, and identify the low-recovery 33 dimensions of Wenchuan to enhance 34 post-disaster recovery and reconstruction 35 efforts, and address the vital importance of 36 local

Other statistics and description data (showed in

Defining and assessing the community recovery to earthquake
The researches contain many major conceptual and assessment approaches to define and assess community recovery.
Community recovery, as the final phase of the disaster life cycle, continues beyond emergency response, that might be taken in the immediate aftermath of a disruption until returning to pre-disaster normality or transforming to a new stable state.This phase may take days, months, even years, to accomplish; thus, requiring long-term planning.The recovery is a dynamic, complex and challenging process that involves all sectors of a community, comprised of the impact of disasters, households, business, buildings, as well the lifeline system (Miles 433 and Chang, 2007).In many cases, it is not   The second is the total recovery time (t1, t2).

Results
In the result of our study, with the assessing approach of community recovery proposed in

Discussion
The overall results of our study highlight the community recovery process which is considered to be an

Figure 1 .Figure 2 .Figure 3 .Figure 3 .
Figure 1.Location of Wenchuan Earthquake 434 even clear if and when recovery has been 435 achieved because of varying stakeholder goals 436 for the community, for example with some 437 wanting it returned to its pre-disaster status 438 and others wanting it to undergo change to 439 realize a vision in which advances are made in 440 risk reduction and other areas.But most of all, 441 the decision-makers of local governments 442 mainly through improving the recovery 443 process to restore the operation of the 444 interrupted business, and to rebuild damaged 445 infrastructure to allow the restarting of normal 446 activities (Alesch et al., 2001

Figure 6 .
Figure 6.The recovery assessment framework

Table 1
Statistics and description data sources 412 Research Report Statistical Report on the Direct Loss and Quantity and the Main Hazard Bearing Body in Wenchuan Earthquake Assessment Report on the public health environment of the core area of Wenchuan in Wenchuan Earthquake Investigation Report on Recovery of Victims in Wenchuan Earthquake Government Report Regulations on the Reconstruction of Wenchuan Earthquake Work Plan for Reconstruction of Wenchuan Earthquake Main Plan for Reconstruction of Wenchuan Earthquake Technical Guide for Reconstruction of Highway of Wenchuan Earthquake Support Program on Reconstruction of Wenchuan Earthquake Action Platform for Twenty-year Psychological Assistance of Wenchuan Earthquake Data Collection from Government Agency Earthquake Relief Leading Group of Chinese Academy of Sciences Working Group on Disaster Reconstruction Planning of Wenchuan Earthquake Working Group on Remote Sensing Monitoring and Disaster Assessment of Wenchuan Earthquake Disaster Data Collection from Website Institute of Mountain Hazards and Environment,CAS China Geological Survey Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources,CAS Institute of Geology and Geophysics,CAS 414 table 1) are gathered by combining different sources (e.g., research report, government report, government agency and website) following the Wenchuan Earthquake.were recovered respectively on May 13, May 15, May 17, and August 12, 2008.With 396 regarding to repair and rebuild the