Abstract
Natural disasters may have catastrophic and long-lasting impacts on communities' physical, economic, and social infrastructure. Slow recovery of educational services following such events is likely to cause traumatic stress in children, lead families to out-migrate, and affect the community's overall social stability. Methods for quantifying and assessing the restoration process of educational systems and their dependencies on other supporting infrastructure have not received adequate attention. This study introduces, for the first time, a new framework to evaluate the functionality, recovery, and resilience of a school system following severe earthquake events. The framework considers both the quantity and quality of education services provided, school enrollment, and staff employment, as well as the interaction between various agents such as staff, students, parents, administration, and community. A virtual testbed community, Centerville, is utilized to highlight the application of this framework. The impact of school reopening policies on the number of students enrolled as well as the potential for homeschooling is also considered. The availability of various enrollment alternatives for students, backup classroom space and functioning utility systems, and facilitation of staff and supplies transfer between schools substantially increase the resilience of the education service.
Recommended Citation
E. M. Hassan et al., "Resilience of School Systems Following Severe Earthquakes," Earth's Future, vol. 8, no. 10, article no. e2020EF001518, Wiley Open Access; American Geophysical Union, Oct 2020.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.1029/2020EF001518
Department(s)
Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering
Publication Status
Open Access
Keywords and Phrases
community resilience; earthquakes; educational policy; functionality; recovery; school systems
International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)
2328-4277
Document Type
Article - Journal
Document Version
Final Version
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2024 The Authors, All rights reserved.
Creative Commons Licensing
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.
Publication Date
01 Oct 2020
Comments
U.S. Department of Commerce, Grant None