Self-built housing as an alternative for post-disaster recovery (original) (raw)
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Disaster Recovery and Community Renewal: Housing Approaches
Routledge eBooks, 2016
How we understand and measure success in disaster recovery establishes the policy platform for how governments prepare for future events. In the past two decades, observers have recognized that the return to pre-event conditions is often unworkable-not only because the pre-event conditions were hazardous, but also because the disaster has created a new normal, requiring new ways of thinking and planning. Disaster recovery means more than restoring physical infrastructure and reconstructing housing and commercial buildings. Recovery is now linked to the concepts of resilience and community renewal, with social, economic, institutional, infrastructural, ecological, and community dimensions. Recent research has helped to identify the linkages among several factors: the welfare of individuals; the welfare of households; business and civic recovery; and the importance of health, education, housing, employment, and environmental conditions in recovery. The capacity for renewal, reorganization, and development is critical for ultimately going beyond recovery to community resilience. The range of approaches to the recovery process after recent earthquakes in Chile, China, Haiti, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, and other countries offers insights into successful policies and challenges to integrating housing and recovery at the human and civic levels.
Rebuilding Housing after a Disaster: Factors for Failure
Disasters, particularly those triggered by nature are often followed by a swift humanitarian relief response to address the resultant emergencies. These efforts are then transitioned through the medium recovery stage, eventually aimed at providing a long term post-disaster reconstruction solution. Emergency humanitarian relief focuses on responding to the immediate need for restoration of basic services, medical treatment and medical supplies, food and temporary shelter, and is a short term strenuous effort. Reconstruction of permanent houses, on the other hand, is a continuous process that often requires decades of effort to return a community to normality. Whilst emergency relief is generally perceived to be very effective, post-disaster housing reconstruction projects often fail to meet their set objectives. This paper outlines and discusses factors that contribute to the failure of post-disaster housing reconstruction projects and the subsequent immediate and long term negative ...
In areas prone to recurrent natural hazards, coping strategies developed by local inhabitants and builders take a great variety of forms. Although technical type of measures, embedded into buildings since their construction, are the most obvious, other measures including temporary technical devices and specific behaviours can significantly contribute to reducing the vulnerability of the built environment of a community. Thus, the identification and recognition of the diversity of these disaster-resilient practices can be extremely valuable for the enhancement of local resilience. This paper presents some findings of analysis on local building cultures conducted in Bangladesh, in the framework of a disaster preparedness and risk reduction program, and in Haiti, in the 2010 post-earthquake context. These experiences are related to the development of a methodology for the analysis of local building practices in risk-prone areas aiming to understand the features and different aspects of constructive strategies developed by local builders while combining contextual factors influencing the architecture and resilience of communities living in areas affected by different types of natural hazards.
Contemporary research, 2020
In spite of the significant grants and supports after 2015 earthquake, housing reconstruction faced numerous challenges in addressing the needs of the disasteraffected communities. The earthquake threatened almost all aspects of the societies in 14 of the most affected districts. Government of Nepal and various development partners, including bilateral agencies, were involved in the implementation of housing reconstruction projects in different districts. All these initiatives in communities yielded diverse results. Because of the resulting disquiet from the public, the post-disaster housing reconstruction is becoming the concern and dilemma to researchers, development and humanitarian organizations worldwide. It is evident that private housing reconstruction is complicated and slow process, which is knotted with social, economic, and political dimensions. The paper highlights the significant contributing factors for accomplishing the housing reconstruction after the earthquake. A multi-dimensional holistic approach interprets the nexus of successful reconstruction, which are discussed in the paper. This paper serves as a valuable resource that highlights the significant factors for the government, development and humanitarian partners, and researchers.
Principles, Practice and Lessons From Haiti for Urban Post-Disaster Shelter Recovery Programs
Asian Journal of Environment and Disaster Management (AJEDM) - Focusing on Pro-active Risk Reduction in Asia, 2014
Most households affected by disasters reconstruct their houses themselves by self-building or employing local labour: they 'self-recover'. Humanitarian agencies' experience in assisting self-recovery in urban communities is limited; little is known about how to support it in practice. This study draws on the experiences and perspectives of households recovering from Typhoon Haiyan (Philippines 2013) and the Gorkha Earthquake (Nepal 2015). It reflects on challenges faced by households to self-recover from major disasters in urban environments, their interactions with humanitarian agencies, national and local institutions, infrastructures, markets and communities, and the influence of national and local governments' policies and practices on self-recovery opportunities. Most of these challenges cannot be addressed by adopting current humanitarian shelter response models, largely developed for rural contexts. Humanitarian agencies should put greater emphasis on facilitation rather than implementation, and respond more flexibly to the complexity of post-disaster urban contexts.
A framework to construct post‐disaster housing
International Journal of Disaster Resilience in the Built Environment, 2013
Natural disasters (such as tornado, flood, hurricane, earthquake, etc.) often destroy hundreds of homes that leave victims homeless and leads to community displacement. In the USA, such disasters happen over 60 times per year. This leads to logistical and contractual nightmare for the planning agencies and political/community leaders required to provide shelter for displaced citizens. One of the most important challenges for the policy makers and aid providers is to make homes available to the homeless victims in as short a period as possible. Temporary shelter is costly and often excessively delayed. Also quality and long stay (more than 4 years for the Katrina victims) in temporary shelter affected victims both mentally and physically. This research proposes a strategic framework that assists responsible entities to provide housing to the disaster victims in a short period of time, for example to construct 200 homes in 30 days after disaster (representing a subdivision). The main objective of this research is to perform feasibility study of implementing such a strategy that would enable agencies to provide better solutions for post disaster housing assistance. This paper mainly explains four phases that constitute the development of the strategic framework. The first two phases of the framework carry out pre-disaster planning and establish relationships among the participating entities. Whereas, the third phase includes simulating post disaster processes identified in the previous phases to evaluate response trade-offs. The last phase is about the real implementation of this strategy after disaster that also incorporates its outcomes and experiences into previously planned strategy. This would help in improving the strategy for future disasters.
Disaster Resilience of Low-cost Houses: Case Study of Thua Thien Hue Province, Vietnam
Civil Engineering and Architecture, 2017
This research documents the post-flood and typhoon conditions of low income housing in the Thua Thien Hue Province, Vietnam, an area prone to extreme flooding in Central Vietnam. The cost of rebuilding houses after a natural hazard has been always a burden for low income households and it often led to the elimination of essential construction practices for disaster resistance. While there has been remarkable improvement in relief and rehabilitation, poor people have been disproportionately vulnerable to extreme events due to their low adaptive capacity and suffered the same damages every year. The research documents existing conditions of low income houses in the Thua Thien Hue province and identifies leading causes of the building failure from the natural disasters. The quality of construction and repairs are assessed based on Coastal Construction Manual and by Federal Emergency Management Agency. In order to examine people's perception toward housing reinforcement as a coping strategy as well as to identify problems and issues associated with achieving stronger and safer housing, focus group and individual interviews were conducted with local residents from four different flood and typhoon-prone communities. The research found that many households in the affected areas now realize the importance of improving housing structures as a coping strategy to resist the impacts of floods and typhoons, however due to low income and a lack of professional instruction and technical guidance in the area, many households still reside in weak and fragile housing conditions that cannot withstand climate related risks. In particular, low-income households spend a considerable amount of their income on housing repair every year. Consultation and communication with professionals about building a resilient housing is lacking. Given that the major immediate recovery action taken by the local people tends to focus on repairing damaged houses, providing proper and applicable construction practices is crucial to improve the housing condition, but also to contribute to reduce poverty in Vietnam.
This paper critiques the traditional project management (PM) approach for post-disaster reconstruction work in relation to long-term effectiveness at strengthening disaster resilience of communities. While assessments of post-disaster reconstruction projects normally occurs within a few years of the disaster this paper is based on a study of four 'good practice' reconstruction projects, 15 years after the earthquake and seven years after the flooding disaster from the Indian states of Gujarat and Bihar respectively. This extended timeframe enabled the examination of long-term outcomes related to disaster resilience of communities. The comparison of the four case study projects through extended timeframe enabled authors to articulate critical success factors contributing to project's effectiveness. The research found that the best long-term outcomes were achieved when the agencies implementing post-disaster housing reconstruction projects: 1) adopted an 'agile' approach to project planning and implementation; 2) allocated ample time for gaining and maintaining community trust; iii) provided multiple materials, technologies and skilled labour choices to ensure hazard-safety of housing, and (iv) continued community capacity building beyond the completion of the reconstruction work. These imperatives have prompted the development of a progressive, spiral model for effective post-disaster housing reconstruction project management which is presented in this paper. Classification: Empirical research paper.
The role of spontaneous construction for post-disaster housing
New concepts, applications and challenges, 2013
Housing is crucial for living and well-being. Due to its vulnerability, one of the most severe consequences after natural disasters has been the destruction of houses, causing impressive numbers of homeless people. After those situations, it is imperative to start the reconstruction works and the provision of houses is a crucial task, since they can help to restore the livelihoods of the affected people. The urgency to supply housing quickly, has lead the formal construction sector to neglect user's needs and expectations, and consequently has not conducted to successful solutions. Contrary to that, informal housing solutions have reached successful results in addressing the user's cultural needs and expectations. Some studies have presented the advantages of spontaneous construction solutions, yet they seem to be ignored and contradicted by the formal construction sector. This study aims to present an assessment of the potentials of spontaneous construction solutions for post-disaster housing development.
International journal of disaster risk reduction, 2017
The main purpose of this article is to propose recommendations to the processes of post-disaster recovery in development countries, focusing on housing recovery, based on the analysis of three relevant experiences in the American continent. The methodology adopted is based on the study of real cases of post-disaster recovery and the data was obtained through bibliographic research, documentary collection and also participant observation using the O-P-R (Observation-Participation-Reflection) model. A discussion on key aspects of housing recovery was performed based on the cases and, as a final result, recommendations are presented considering the psychosocial and the social capital recovery, the restoration of livelihoods, the supply of temporary housing and shelters, the selection of beneficiaries for the habitational recovery programs, the provision of permanent housing and the governance in the disaster recovering process.