Observations on the Effects of a Global Pandemic on the Time To Recovery (TTR) from Natural Disasters

Abstract

Until the global outbreak of Coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19), little attention had been paid to the possibility that a significant number of critical personnel in both the infrastructure and disaster response and recovery supply chains could be incapacitated or otherwise unavailable due to an on-going pandemic. The purpose of this paper is to use CRISIS, an existing decision-support optimization tool for the restoration of civil infrastructure damaged by a hurricane, to investigate how a community’s Time To Recovery (TTR) following a hurricane could be extended due to an on-going pandemic and what the consequences could be. The results of preliminary modeling presented here suggests that the impacts could be significant and that our current understanding of such compound extreme events is inadequate to the potential threat.