Disaster recovery: the role of pre-planning and temporary housing

Abstract

Disasters, both natural and unnatural are capable of destroying cities in a matter of seconds. The built environment of a city can take years to develop and within moments be taken away. Disasters obviously have enormous human costs, but for those who survive there are huge amounts of work to restore what was taken away. This research focuses on identifying how the construction industry is currently dealing with the disaster recovery projects. A questionnaire survey was conducted in order to understand stakeholders’ perceptions on disaster recovery. Particular focuses were placed on the role of preplanning and temporary housing during the disaster recovery process. The results found that both temporary housing and preplanning play a critical role in a speedy recovery from disaster and more importantly to improve the resilience of the community to disasters.