Dissecting Resilience Triangle: Unravelling Resilience Curve Archetypes and Properties in Human Systems Facing Weather Hazards

TL;DR

This study empirically classifies human mobility resilience patterns after weather hazards into archetypes using high-resolution data, revealing thresholds and properties that enhance understanding of community recovery behaviors.

Contribution

It introduces a data-driven classification of resilience curve archetypes based on empirical mobility data, advancing beyond conceptual models.

Findings

Identified three main resilience archetypes: rapid, bimodal, and slow recovery.

Discovered critical impact thresholds at 20% and 60% impact extent.

Established a recovery rate of 2.5% per day as a key threshold for resilience archetypes.

Abstract

Resilience curves have been the primary approach for conceptualizing and representing the resilience behavior of communities during hazard events; however, the use of resilience curves has remained as a mere conceptual and visual tool with limited data-driven characterization and empirical grounding. Empirical characterizations of resilience curves provide essential insights regarding the manner in which differently impacted systems of communities absorb perturbations and recover from disruptions. To address this gap, this study examines human mobility resilience patterns following multiple weather-related hazard events in the United States by analyzing more than 2000 empirical resilience curves constructed from high-resolution location-based mobility data. These empirical resilience curves are then classified using k-means clustering based on various features into archetypes. Three main archetypes of human mobility resilience are identified: Type I, with rapid recovery after mild impact; Type II, exhibiting bimodal recovery after moderate impact; and Type III, showing slower recovery after severe impact. The results also reveal critical thresholds, such as the bimodal recovery breakpoint at a 20% impact extent, at which the recovery rate decreases, and the critical functional threshold at a 60% impact extent, above which recovery rate would be rather slow. The results show that a critical functional recovery rate of 2.5% per day is necessary to follow the bimodal resilience archetype when impact extent exceeds more than 20%. These findings provide novel and important insights into different resilience curve archetypes and their fundamental properties. Departing from using resilience curves as a mere concept and visual tool, the data-driven specification of resilience curve archetypes and their properties improve our understanding of the resilience patterns...