Integrated Assessment of 15 Post-Disaster Shelters

Abstract

Due to climate change, the number of extreme weather events increases every year, causing damage and affecting populations. Therefore, humanitarian agencies have to optimize their resources to be able to respond to future disasters. In this thesis, whether there is a post-disaster shelter solution, which needs minimal production factors to achieve appropriate shelter properties like, a long lifespan or a good disaster resistance, was researched. The study of fifteen shelters showed that above all the fact whether the construction material was procured from abroad or sourced locally had a major influence on the shelter characteristics.

The study also revealed that, the shelter characteristics depend on local conditions, and influences of the settlement scale. Therefore, eleven settlement projects were studied in order to understand the interactions between the shelter and the settlement scale. Legal, logistical, conceptual, and external factors were found, which influence the construction process of a shelter project. Additionally, it was observed that the construction process follows the shape of an S-curve, which can be divided into three different phases with different construction rates.

Finally, it could be shown that the shelter strategy applied in a shelter project and the average construction rate have an impact on specific shelter characteristics.

These results led to the conclusion that the assessment of local conditions is crucial to apply a shelter strategy and a shelter design that responds to the these conditions. To facilitate this decision and in order to improve the allocation of resources during a construction project, two tools were developed using the findings from this thesis.