Construction Beyond War: Assessing Time and Cost of Prefabrication in Rebuilding Post-Disaster Cities

Abstract

The urgent need for housing in challenging contexts such as Middle East and developing countries contradicts with the long time required to provide adequate responses, especially in the case of severely affected cities by war and mass destruction. The city of Mosul in Iraq is a case where there is an urgent need for reconstruction, especially in the housing sector. Advanced technologies in construction present opportunities in facing post-war reconstruction challenges. Prefabrication has been used for housing delivery around the world due to its efficiency in terms of time and cost as construction time-frame and costs form the core challenges of a successful and functional approach for reconstruction in post-war cities. This paper is part of a comprehensive research that investigates the potential of adopting prefabrication in housing delivery through a BIM-based inspection. This paper inspects a developed housing prototype to examine the cost and time feasibility of the design approach and application of prefabrication. The main findings include identifying the significance of prefabrication in presenting cost-efficient and time-effective construction approach for the restoration of the damaged housing sector in the city of Mosul.