Barriers to an effective post-recovery process: A comparative analysis of the Public's and experts' perspectives

The general public and experts in post-disaster recovery see the barriers to effective and timely post-recovery processes from different viewpoints, and it is important to understand the differences in their observations and in the ways that they prioritize the barriers. The aim of this study was to (1) determine the experts' and public's perspectives or barriers to timely post-recovery, (2) prioritize the identified barriers, and (3) perform a comparative analysis of them. The authors identified 62 barriers to timely post-recovery and distributed a survey to experts and the public to determine their assessments of the importance of the barriers. The research team used a Relative Importance Index (RII) analysis to prioritize the barriers and found that the experts consider “undefined roles and responsibilities in the process of recovery” as the highest weighted barrier, while the public ranks “insufficient built infrastructures” as the top barrier. In the comparative analysis of the perspectives, the barrier that was perceived the most differently was “damage to major transportation systems.” The results of this study will help educate researchers about the different views that the experts and the public have of post-recovery barriers.