The Role of Local Building Systems in Enhancing the Sustainability of Post-Disaster Temporary Housing

Abstract

Housing destruction and resulting population displacement are among the most visible effects of post-disaster scenarios, and the provision of temporary housing during the disaster recovery phase is critical to ensuring adequate levels of comfort, protection, privacy, and a gradual return to normal life activities. The urgent need to provide temporary housing quickly led to a focus on the use of prefabricated building systems based on standardized and comprehensive solutions, and despite the multitude of solutions offered in previous disaster scenarios, they often led to unsuccessful results. Since the solutions offered did not meet users' social and cultural needs, they were unsustainable in the long and short term of the disaster recovery period. Conversely, solutions based on local building systems can significantly reduce costs and provide temporary housing units faster. The research aims to understand the role of the local building system in building and providing temporary housing after disasters and its impact on the sustainable performance of temporary housing during the disaster recovery phase. The research found that a balanced use of prefabricated and local building systems is the best option to make temporary housing more successful after disasters. Keywords: post-disaster, sustainability, temporary housing, local building systems, prefabricated building systems DOI: 10.7176/CER/14-2-05 Publication date: April 30 th 2022