Time Gap: Countdown to Restore Critical Services is an Urgent but Missing Component of Disaster Planning

Abstract Critical services, also known as community lifeline services, are necessary for individual well-being and community stability at the local level, and security at the national level. Variations of this concept are now firmly embedded in several fields, ranging from disaster recovery and electric grid planning to domestic economic development and international disaster relief. There is recognition that time plays an important role in how severely people are affected by the service disruption, and it is speculated that the impacts are non-linear in time. However, there has not been, to date, a study that has attempted to collect the time frames at which loss of services significantly affects human well-being. In this paper we synthesize findings from a meta-analysis of literature that address the temporal dimension of critical or lifeline service criticality and identify critical gaps in our cumulative understanding of the urgency of lifeline criticality. The findings can be used to inform further empirical data collection and subsequent refinement of resilience planning tools and multi-disciplinary emergency response and preparedness efforts.