A Disaster-Recovery Typology Framework: Conceptual Development and Application to Sustainable Recovery Planning

Background and rationale: A review of the current disaster-recovery literature highlights the lack of standard frameworks for comparing recovery experiences. Indicator-based evaluation tools are often context-specific, and the generalizability of lessons learned from case studies is limited. This research offers a diagnostic framework that can be used both as a tool for analyzing and strengthening specific instances of disaster recovery and for comparing recoveries across contexts. Methodology: The literature search was conducted to identify important elements of recovery. Results: This article presents the Recovery Typology Framework (RTF)—a tool for analyzing and characterizing recovery efforts, identifying recovery strengths and weaknesses, and comparing disaster recovery across settings and scales. Useful to both scholars and practitioners, the RTF is divided into process, outcome, and assessment aspects of disaster recovery. Recovery processes can be efficient or participatory. Recovery outcomes can be aimed at stabilization, restoration, or improvement. Both objective and subjective assessment methods can be used to evaluate recovery processes and outcomes. Types of evaluation vary from formative to summative throughout the recovery process. This article applies the RTF to Israel’s national long-term earthquake recovery plans, demonstrating how this tool can be used to characterize, critique, and improve recovery planning. Contribution and usefulness: The study contributes to disaster-recovery scholarship by offering a conceptual–analytical framework that integrates governance processes, recovery outcomes, and assessment mechanisms into a single comparative structure. Rather than proposing a prescriptive or empirically validated model, the RTF is designed as a diagnostic and interpretive tool that can be applied across diverse contexts to reveal trade-offs and guide more reflexive recovery planning. The framework makes it possible to identify the unique blend of elements in specific recovery experiences, outlines the trade-offs implicit in recovery decision-making, and facilitates comparison of recovery experiences across contexts. Contribution to UN SDGs: The RTF offers a tool for identifying areas of recovery that contribute to and threaten the long-term sustainability of recovery efforts.