Resilience to Earthquake Disasters
John Vargo, Erica Seville, Ilan Noy
Encyclopaedia of Earthquake Engineering, 2014, Springer
Introduction
Resilience to earthquake disasters should be a goal of any community living in a seismically active landscape. Resilience is the ability to not only survive but also to thrive in the face of adversity – in this case an earthquake. There are many aspects to achieving a resilient community. This entry will first explore the concept of resilience and the use of the term by different disciplines. It then goes on to look at the different systemic layers of resilience that are needed to achieve resilience to earthquake disasters, using examples from the Christchurch, New Zealand, 2010/2011 earthquakes to illustrate. The final section of the entry looks at opportunities for improving resilience to earthquake disasters. This entry serves as an introduction to the Disaster Recovery, Reconstruction, and Loss Modeling section of the Encyclopedia of Earthquake Engineering. Throughout the entry, readers are referred to other papers within the section Earthquake Engineering where more information can be found on particular topics.