This National Science Foundation funded study builds on existing theories of post-disaster recovery decision-making to examine a new and increasingly relevant set of questions about how and why pre-disaster resilience policies survive or shift in the aftermath of disaster events. This work is crucially important in order to understand how to make resilience policies themselves more robust in the face of an expanding set of climate risks. Specifically, our study is guided by theories of post-disaster recovery and resilience that describe how local government policies succeed or fail after catastrophic events.

The post-disaster planning and policy environment is characterized by time compression, when urban development processes occur within shortened timeframes. Some plans and policies are more compatible with time compression than others; in particular, time compression is challenging for bureaucratic activities like planning and regulation that ordinarily rely on lengthy stakeholder and public engagement processes to help balance short- and long-term policy considerations. A substantial body of research shows that the process of government-led recovery – how policies are formulated and the nature, quality, and coordination of stakeholder and resident engagement – has significant influence on the breadth and scope of policy changes that local governments are likely to make.

The focusing events scholarship suggests that this relationship may be especially important after disaster when trust in government, policy preferences, and public involvement in decision making can vary significantly, sometimes being led by technocrats rather than through open consultative processes. Trust in government – influenced by communication from government officials and staff to residents and also by the two-way consultative nature of disaster recovery processes established in a community – is also an important determinant of whether policy changes to bolster resilience are made. What is unclear is whether previously established resilience policies can survive in the time-compressed recovery process after an unanticipated and un-planned-for disaster event like the Marshall Fire.

To investigate these questions, the research team is: (1) administering a longitudinal survey of individuals who lived in three affected jurisdictions at the time of the Marshall Fire to assess their intent to rebuild, their engagement in the recovery process, their support for resilience policies, and their attitudes towards and trust in government over time; (2) interviewing local government elected officials, (3) observing disaster recovery meetings, and (4) analyzing recovery-related plans and documents during the first year after the catastrophic fire.