A capital model for disaster resilience

This paper proposes a capital model for disaster resilience. A central notion to this effect is viewing an organization as a capital conversion and capital creation system (Mandviwalla et al. 2014). Systems resilience was originally defined as the measure of a systems persistence and ability to absorb disturbances (Holling 1973). Our approach corresponds to "resilience-1; Resilience as rebound from trauma and return to equilibrium as," which according to Woods (2015) is one of the four main categories of disaster resilience. We develop a system dynamics model expressing the main features observed in selected municipalities affected by the Great East Japan Earthquake. We show that the model is able to describe qualitatively the processes of capital destruction by the earthquake with the associated tsunami and the subsequent capital recreation. We discuss how the system dynamics model can be used to further increase our understanding of capital conversion processes in disaster resilience.