Building-Permit Reconfiguration in the Year of the 2024 Hualien Earthquake: A 22-Jurisdiction Benchmark in Taiwan

The manuscript addresses a practical problem in post-disaster monitoring: building-permit counts can rise even when the total scale of approved construction activity decreases. Using official 2024 administrative statistics for all 22 local jurisdictions in Taiwan, we show that Hualien County issued 36.9% more construction permits than in 2023 while total permitted floor area decreased 22.5%. The implied mean floor area per permit contracted 43.4%, the largest contraction in the national benchmark. A ten-year Hualien series and use-permit comparison are used to bound the interpretation rather than overstate causality.