“Transportation Performance, Disaster Vulnerability, and Long-Term Effects of Earthquakes”

This paper discusses the critical role of transportation systems in disaster recovery and the development of any long-term economic effects from earthquakes, based on insights from the Kobe earthquake and other disasters. The occurrence of long-term effects on regional economies has been controversial in the disaster literature and are for the most part ignored in earthquake loss estimation models. However, events such as the Kobe earthquake clearly demonstrate that certain kinds of long-term impacts do occur, at least in catastrophic disasters. Moreover, performance and recovery of transportation systems appear to play a major role in the development of long-term impacts. This arises in large part because transportation infrastructure often requires substantially lengthier repair times than other lifeline systems. Focusing primarily on the Kobe earthquake, this paper identifies two particularly significant examples of long-term effects of the disaster: loss of business at marine ports, and the development of striking intra-urban spatial differentials in disaster recovery. In both cases, this paper argues, transportation loss served to accentuate existing social and economic conditions of vulnerability, alter the competitiveness of places (whether globally or within a region), and thereby lead to long-term loss.