Patel, S and Hastak, M (2013) A framework to construct post-disaster housing. International Journal of Disaster Resilience in the Built Environment, 4(1), pp. 95-114. ISSN 1759-5916
Abstract
Purpose: Natural disasters 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 four years for the Katrina victims) in temporary shelter affected victims both mentally and physically. The aim of this paper is to propose 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). Design/methodology/approach: 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. Findings: It was found through second part of research, simulation studies, that such a strategy can be prepared before the disaster and activated when needed. This would drastically reduce the housing response time. Originality/value: This would help in improving the strategy for future disasters. Successful execution would facilitate opportunities to reduce stress for the victims and encourage faster recovery.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | capacity; construction management; disaster housing strategy; disaster mitigation; disaster response; disasters; housing; post disaster housing; temporary shelter |
| Index terms: | strategy, feasibility study, natural disaster, agency, housing, methodology, temporary shelter, recovery, disaster response, housing strategy, implementation, disaster planning, disaster mitigation |
| Subjects: | operations management, design stages, contractual arrangements, construction type, housing and residential development, sociology, emergency and crisis management, environmental hazards, management, research methods |
| Topics: | Design Practice, Urban Studies, Research Practice, Project Management, Business Strategy, Construction Technology, Procurement, Sustainability |
| Descriptive scope: | 3 PCT |
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