Disaster and recovery: Processes compressed in time

The post-disaster environment consists of a compression of urban development activities in time and in a limited space, a phenomenon referred to as time compression. Some phenomena compress in time more easily than others. This differential compression leads to a distortion in the interrelationships of urban development and decision processes when compared to relationships among those processes in normal times. Different types of organizations perform differentially under time compression. Everyone in the focused space of the disaster simultaneously seeks access to scarce resources, and those with better access to power are able to capture these finite resources before others can. Time-compression phenomena have implications for institutional design to facilitate post-disaster recovery. An important function of government agencies is to route resources from national to state/provincial to local agencies, and then to the community.