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The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami damaged a number of buildings in many Asian countries. The research objective of this paper is to determine the significant predictor variables and the direction of their relationships regarding the building damage level. This quantitative study used data collected by Murao and Nakazato ['Recovery curves for housing reconstruction in Sri Lanka after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami,' J. Earthquake Tsunami 4(2), 51-60; 'Vulnerability functions for buildings based on damage survey data in Sri Lanka after the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami,' Proc. 1st Int. Conf. Sustainable Built Environment, Kandy, Sri Lanka, pp. 371-378] in Sri Lanka for analysis via the statistical approach. The tested explanatory parameters included the inundation depth, the structural materials, and the areas. This research is among the first pioneering efforts in applying the statistical analysis to investigate the influential parameters in tsunami damage areas. This work can contribute to the damage analysis research area in terms of providing the proved parameters as well as contributing to the practical understanding of urban planners, engineers, and related persons who are involved in building construction and disaster management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On the 26th of December 2004, the Tsunami damaged to five provinces in Sri Lanka and more than 40,000 people were displaced, lost, or killed within a short time. After the tsunami, the Government provided three types of houses for the victims (temporary shelters, transitional houses, and permanent houses). The authors conducted several field surveys and interviews in the damaged area to investigate the recovery conditions, and obtained dataset, which had been collected for 13 months since December 2004 by Rebuilding and Development Agency. It shows the construction status of transitional house and permanent house in the damaged areas. This paper demonstrates recovery curves for the transitional houses and the permanent houses. With the aim of constructing post-earthquake recovery curves for Sri Lanka, the factors of time (months) and completion ratio of building construction are used. The obtained curves quantitatively clarify the regional differences in the completion dates and processes of construction. The proposed quantitative methodology will be used for other damaged countries due to the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. It means that this kind of analysis is essential for investigating post-disaster recovery process because it enables comparative studies of urban/rural planning among different types of post-disaster recovery processes throughout the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]