Challenges review of decision making in post-disaster construction

Afkhamiaghda, M and Elwakil, E (2023) Challenges review of decision making in post-disaster construction. International Journal of Construction Management, 23(14), pp. 2409-2418. ISSN 1562-3599

Abstract

As a natural disaster occurs, it negatively affects and destroys a large scale of urban pattern in a short period of time. Building a structure in such situations is considered a process that encompasses broad topics such as social, economic, and environmental issues linked together and interrelated. In addition, many of these tasks have conflicting nature towards one another, making it difficult to manage the process as a whole. This research aims to review: (1) The different data-mining-based methods used in post-disaster, and (2) The practice and research trends in disaster resilience and disaster risk reduction literature published in the last two decades. Finally, future work and research challenges are recommended to help the decision-making research community set a clear agenda for the upcoming research. The researchers have identified 150 academic papers from the last two decades through text mining using the 'Engineering Village' database. The search considered high-ranked peer-reviewed journals, conference proceedings, and most cited documents. Post-disaster housing heavily relies on tacit knowledge instead of hard measurable data like any construction field. There is a lack of decision-making studies in the post-disaster topic using hard data. Therefore, it is essential to consider any measurable factors that stem from the environment compared to relying only on expert opinion, as using solely tacit knowledge is ineffective. In addition to this, there have not been enough studies on this matter using a combination of hard data and tacit knowledge. A step towards understanding different work areas in disaster resilience, the researchers identified, categorized, and grouped the literature review based on different fields of post-disaster decision-making. Moreover, the research identifies and discusses the most frequent topics and techniques of multi-objective decision-making in post-disaster situations. This article is the first to provide a comprehensive conceptualization of the challenges and constraints for decision-making in post-disaster construction.

Item Type: Article
Uncontrolled Keywords: data collection; disaster resilience; material selection; optimization; site selection; waste management
Index terms: decision-making, documents, waste management, site selection, tacit knowledge, disaster risk reduction, housing, natural disaster, environmental issue, literature review, disaster resilience, journal, mining, conference, database
Subjects: data analysis and analytics, construction type, research dissemination and communication, climate science, environmental issues, waste management, geotechnical engineering, decision analysis, cognitive psychology, data management, environmental hazards, professional development
Topics: Digital Applications, Research Practice, Information Management, Engineering Principles, Construction Technology, Sustainability, Risk Management
Descriptive scope: 3 PCA

N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here