Transition from Response to Recovery: A Knowledge Commons to Support Decision Making following the 12 January 2010 Haiti Earthquake

The transition between disaster response operations and sustainable recovery represents a critical stage in rebuilding communities following disaster. We document this transition process following the 12 January 2010 earthquake in Haiti through direct field observation, review of documents and official situation reports, as well as interviews with key managers from organizations engaged in disaster operations in Haiti. Without an effective transition to recovery, disaster-stricken communities risk escalating failures in performance of key technical functions that underlie the provision of basic services in health, housing, education, commercial activity, and environmental restoration essential to building a resilient society. The interactions among social, environmental and technical systems are rarely tracked systematically, but are central to the longer-term economic, social, and technical development of a disaster-resilient community. We propose developing a “knowledge commons” infrastructure—multilingual, interdisciplinary, and interjurisdictional—to sustain a system-wide learning process as a primary goal for the reconstruction of Haiti.