Disaster relief: From Temporary to Permanent

Abstract

Each year, around 90,000 people are killed by natural disasters including earthquakes, tsunami, floods, wildfires, etc., which impact 160 million people annually. The number is increasing, due to the increasing global population and urbanization. All these disasters destroy infrastructures, buildings and roads in affected areas and ultimately lead to economic and social problems like reconstruction, economic recessions and refugees. Especially in urban areas, the high density of population and buildings may also lead to more serious losses and resettlement problems. The lack of undeveloped land has moved the redevelopment area away from the city center and has led to population loss and slow economic recovery. Therefore, in exploring how to carry out post-disaster reconstruction in urban areas, it is not only necessary to consider the resettlement of the affected people and housing reconstruction, but also how to maximize the use of urban space in urban areas with high-density buildings and population to rationally allocate housing reconstruction and resettlement of people. Temporary housing has played a huge role in disaster recovery in the past. It was able to provide living spaces for people who had lost their houses as quickly as possible, while also buying time for subsequent recovery. But most temporary housing is also unsustainable and wasteful, which can slow recovery and generate large amounts of construction waste after a disaster. This project will explore how temporary housing can evolve into permanent housing as a flexible structure, which can enhance its sustainability and contribute to local recovery to a certain extent. This thesis will highlight some previous case studies of disasters to study the built environment after natural disasters, and how the built environment recovers and transitions from temporary to permanent. This evidence proves that public open spaces in cities can also be used as restoration land for disaster recovery, becoming a bridge to connect temporary housing to permanent housing.