Graduation Semester and Year

2020

Language

English

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy in Civil Engineering

Department

Civil Engineering

First Advisor

Sharareh Kermanshachi

Abstract

Destructive natural disasters such as hurricanes, affect countries around the world. To recover from a hurricane, the managers need to make various decisions; however, what makes the post-hurricane decision making unique is lack of time to make the optimum decision. A comprehensive understanding of barriers to recovery can lead to development of policies that help prevent delays in recovery process and consequently results in resiliency. Although several studies have been performed to identify the recovery barriers, they did not provide a comprehensive review of barriers and their classification. On the other hand, experts and the public commonly have different understandings about the post-hurricane conditions and the corresponding issues. This may elongate the process of post-hurricane recovery and consequently affects many social and economic aspects of the people living in the affected areas. A precise investigation of the experts’ and public’s understanding of the post-hurricane barriers and their reasons would be useful for timely recovery. In addition, delays in accomplishment of post-hurricane recovery processes has been a major issue for the governors recently, leading to huge economic losses. Different barriers and of different types intervene in causing delays in the recovery after hurricanes. In addition, the interaction among these barriers can intensify the negative effect of them and further delays. Thus, a significant step toward resolving this problem is determining how these barriers affect the recovery process and interact with each other. The aims of this study were to (1) identify public’s perception on the importance of barriers of timely post-hurricane recovery, (2) identify experts’ perception on the importance of barriers of timely post-hurricane recovery, (3) prioritize the barriers of timely post-hurricane recovery based on public’s and experts’ perception, (4) investigate whether there are relationships among the barriers to timely post-hurricane recovery or not, (5) identify what is the causal relationship among the barriers, and (6) determine to which extent the barriers and their interactions affect the timeliness of recovery process. An exhaustive review of 1,535 publications from existing literature was performed, and after a thorough search and exclusion process, 452 publications, focusing on hurricane-related issues and authored by scientists, practitioners, etc., were collected and sorted by source of literature, disaster type, year of publication, continent of origin, and data collection method. Sixty-two (62) barriers to effective post-hurricane recovery were identified and sorted into five categories: financial and economic, social, infrastructure and housing reconstruction, environment, and coordination and resources. Then, a survey was developed and distributed to experts and public separately to explore their perspectives of the importance of the identified barriers. Next, the barriers were ranked from both groups point of view, using Relative Importance Index (RII) analysis. Then, ten interviews were conducted with experts in post-hurricane recovery in order to evaluate the results of the survey and analysis. Implementing structural equation modeling (SEM) technique, the interrelated network of 62 barriers to timely post-hurricane recovery process was modeled and the impacts of barriers on the time of the recovery after hurricanes was evaluated. The findings showed that according to the experts model the barriers underlying coordination latent variable have more impacts on the time of recovery. However, for the public model the highest priority was given to the barriers underlying the social group. This research assists decision-makers in understanding the critical paths that lead to delays in the post-hurricane recovery process. In addition, they would be able to predict the impacts of interdependent barriers during the recovery process after hurricanes. The results demonstrated that infrastructure and housing reconstruction category includes highest number of recovery barriers. The top two most-cited barriers in the literature were rate of employment and number of active small businesses. In addition, the results of this study showed that the experts selected undefined roles and responsibilities in the recovery as the most important barrier to timely post-hurricane recovery, while the public selected insufficient built infrastructures. In addition, five of the top-10 ranked barriers of the experts and public were similar; even though these barriers did not have the same ranks according to the two groups. Furthermore, the findings showed that according to the experts model the barriers underlying coordination latent variable have more impacts on the time of recovery other than the other variable groups. However, for the public model the highest priority was given to the barriers underlying the social group. This research assists decision-makers in understanding the critical paths that lead to delays in the post-hurricane recovery process. In addition, they would be able to predict the impacts of interdependent barriers during the recovery process after hurricanes.

Keywords

Post-hurricane Recovery, Reconstruction, Structural Equation Modeling, Prioritization, Barrier.

Disciplines

Civil and Environmental Engineering | Civil Engineering | Engineering

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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