Development of a hurricane recovery function and resilience model for single-family residential homes

The resilience of communities, infrastructure, and the environment in the face of hurricanes has increasingly become of public interest in the wake of recent natural disasters and environmental activism. Previous methodologies have attempted to quantify resilience for various structures and scenarios. Many studies have primarily investigated the robustness of critical infrastructure (e.g., bridges, emergency facilities, and water systems) which are essential to the function of a community. However, few studies have applied this approach to individual residential buildings. Therefore, this research aimed to adapt the most recent recovery functions developed for residential homes by considering measurable factors that are known to influence recovery, including: available resources and preparedness. The loss function developed for residential homes damaged by hurricanes was adapted to account for multiple hazards. The resilience model developed through this study investigated resiliency of individual residential homes across several communities. The model was validated using the observed damage from Hurricane Sandy in 2012 in the study region. The results of this study provide improved hurricane loss, recovery, and resilience functions for more accurate use with individual residential structures. Thus, this research provides an essential, innovative contribution to the quantification of infrastructure resilience at the residential level