Once the immediate crisis has passed, the task of recovery and restoration begins. In this phase different information needs come to the fore. These include the need for information to help the community return to normal, rebuild its lost assets, and strengthen its resilience for the future by feeding information back into preparedness.

The process of recovery and restoration demands information about damage to physical infrastructure, the built environment, and public and private services. To accurately assess damage and plan the recovery, detailed baseline information documenting the "before" situation is critical. Pre-established priorities for restoration give emergency crews a rough guide for early action, although these can be honored only to the extent that actual conditions allow. The interdependencies among these systems must also be understood, because steps taken to restore one system can affect, or even interfere with or undo, efforts to restore another.

The immensity of the event in New York generated needs no planner had anticipated: thousands of grieving families searching for loved ones, forensic and mortuary services beyond a scope anyone had envisioned, business interruptions for thousands of companies, and massive telecommunications failures. These and other community needs demanded immediate identification and assessment as to nature, scope, and duration.

Routine public services such as sanitation and public health facilities are necessary resources and capabilities to be mobilized in the event of a disaster, but information about the existence of many other services also needs to be readily available. These include up-to-date contact lists for public, private, and nonprofit organizations likely to be called into service. Equipment and facility inventories are needed, as well as skills-based human resource inventories that can be called into action. In addition, those responsible for recovery and restoration need readily activated plans or templates for creating services and facilities on the fly.

Once recovery and restoration are underway, managers and workers need information about deployment and coordination of activities and participants. Because so many factors are interdependent, a clear understanding of the role and activities of each player helps prevent inadvertent conflicts or redundancies and offers opportunities to take advantage of complementary capabilities. As the recovery progresses, accurate information about its status needs to extend to all the various components of activity. This information allows for temporary structures, activities, and restrictions to be gradually and logically reduced as the community returns to normal.