Multidisciplinary Perspectives of Micro Human Efforts in Post-Disaster Recovery

Abstract

This seminal discourse on a phenomenon called “micro-human efforts” sheds light on specific human capacities that assist in sustainable disaster recovery at various geospatial scales. It focuses on the efforts made by individuals that develop into collective measures and the establishment of a new status quo. Typically, these efforts tend to sweep away from the core to the peripheries of recovery programs due to their innate vulnerabilities to systemic limitations and consequent distortions. Via a range of systematic research reviews and original research, this special issue narrates a series of studies that reveal a few critical attributes of a human effort-based disaster recovery model. To an extent, it synthesizes isolated multidisciplinary research with new insights to deliver a re-developmental role model that could potentially mobilize efforts of vulnerable communities in defining resilience for themselves. It further flags focus areas to lead enhanced protocols, policy recommendations, and best practice scenarios by primarily promoting a self-based recovery approach.