While public participation can improve recovery planning, post-disaster environments pose unique challenges and opportunities that can enhance or undermine participation depending on the recovery policies and features of the planning process. This paper presents findings of archival research and in-depth interviews in a qualitative case study of Galveston (Texas) following Hurricane Ike to examine the challenges and successes of participatory recovery planning in Galveston and the factors that shape these outcomes. Seizing heightened participation momentum after a disaster by engaging residents in a transparent process provides optimism and an opportunity for recovery champions to gain support for their ideas. However, planning while unprepared, homogeneity of participants, and skipping deliberation may limit voices of the marginalized residents in decisions and undermine implementation of the proposals. Under-represented socially vulnerable groups should be included in all stages of recovery planning through deliberate outreach strategies tailored to their circumstances. Supported by professional planners and technical experts, involved stakeholders should engage in deliberation rather than mere input solicitation to increase the effectiveness of post-disaster participatory planning.

The retrofit of wood-frame residential buildings is a relatively effective strategy to mitigate damage caused by windstorms. However, little is known about the effect of modifying building performance for intense events such as a tornado and the subsequent social and economic impacts that result at the community level following an event. This paper presents a method that enables a community to select residential building performance levels representative of either retrofitting or adopting a new design code that computes target community metrics for the effects on the economy and population. Although not a full risk analysis, a series of generic tornado scenarios for different Enhanced Fujita (EF) ratings are simulated, and five resilience metrics are assigned to represent community goals based on economic and population stability. To accomplish this, the functionality of the buildings following the simulated tornado is used as input to a computable general equilibrium (CGE) economics model that predicts household income, employment, and domestic supply at the community level. Population dislocation as a function of building damage and detailed sociodemographic US census-based data is also predicted and serves as a core community resilience metric. Finally, this proposed methodology demonstrates how the metrics can help meet community-level resilience objectives for decision support based on a level of design code improvement or retrofit level. The method is demonstrated for Joplin, Missouri. All analyses and data have been developed and made available on the open-source IN-CORE modeling environment. The proposed multidisciplinary methodology requires continued research to characterize the uncertainty in the decision support results.