A disaster resilient built environment in urban cities

Purpose – This research aims at making recommendations to empower the Sri Lankan local governments in creating a disaster resilient built environment. Disasters make a huge impact on the built environment. In turn, failure of the built environment can create significant impacts on social and economic activities. Thus, when moving towards safer cities, it is important to develop the built environment in such a way that it can withstand threats posed by natural disasters. Various stakeholders need to get involved in the process of making a disaster resilient built environment, of which the local governments need to play a critical role, as they are the closest government body to the local community. However, local governments are facing a number of challenges in responding to city resilience activities. Design/methodology/approach – The research adopts case studies as its research strategy and investigates three cities in Sri Lanka which are potentially vulnerable to disasters. A number of expert interviews have also been conducted to supplement the case study findings. Findings – The paper presents the challenges faced by the Sri Lankan municipalities in creating a disaster resilient built environment and provides recommendations to empower municipalities to effectively contribute to city resilience. The paper suggests amending policies related to establishment of municipal councils and disaster management to provide more authoritative powers for municipalities to effectively engage in city resilience building. Findings also revealed the importance of addressing financial and human resource issues, which were the main drivers of hindrance. Furthermore, all relevant urban development plans, risk maps, disaster resilient planning, construction and operation guidelines and resilient land use practices need to be integrated into existing planning and building regulations, and proper monitoring and control mechanisms have to be established to ensure compliance with the regulations. In doing so, it is important to raise awareness of council officials of disaster risks and resilient practices by way of organising educational programmes such as seminars and workshops. It is also suggested that municipal officials should be involved in national-level decision-making with regard to their local areas and to establish proper communication channels to exchange decision and information related to city resilience. Research limitations/implications – The paper is based on case studies in three cities and a number of expert interviews, which are limited to the Sri Lankan context. Inputs from other cities from developed countries may further validate the recommendations. Originality/value – The paper highlights the challenges faced by the local governments in creating a disaster resilient built environment within Sri Lankan cities and provides recommendations as to how the local governments could be empowered in creating a disaster resilient built environment within cities

The Challenges and Obstacles of Post-Disaster Road Infrastructure Reconstruction in the Pre-Construction Phase

Purpose The reconstruction of road infrastructure in the post-disaster context require different approach when compared with road projects in the normal development context. Disaster recovery projects are seen as having their own unique identity, particularly due to stakeholder issues, resource challenges, capability issues, and even long-term reliability concerns. This paper invites a discussion regarding the challenges and obstacles identified in the reconstruction of road infrastructure in a post-disaster reconstruction setting, and focuses the discussion on the pre-construction phase. Design/ Methodology/ Approach The challenges and obstacles presented in this paper are based on the literature and the empirical evidence collected from the research in three case study districts in Aceh, Indonesia. Twenty-eight face-to-face semi-structured interviews were conducted with stakeholders of road infrastructure at the local, provincial and national level, and represented by respondents from the public works, planning agency, disaster management agency, consultant, contractors, and donor agencies. The findings were triangulated with the literature and consulted with five experts in the road infrastructure and disaster reconstruction area. Findings The identified challenges and obstacles are divided into three groups of discussion; planning and programming, road design, and procurement. Whilst some of these challenges are not unique to post-disaster context, the scale of the risks had been undermined. Originality/ value This paper identifies the challenges and obstacles of a road project in the post-disaster setting from the pre-construction perspective. Identification of these challenges and obstacles may help improve the implementation of post-disaster road infrastructure reconstruction projects in future recovery projects, particularly in the developing world

Empowering Local Governments in Making Cities Resilient To Disasters: Case Study as a Research Strategy

The paper intends to elaborate the research methodology adopted for a doctoral research study aimed at developing a framework to empower the local governments to make cities resilient to disasters in the built environment context. Based on the constructionism epistemological undertaking and the theoretical perspective of being interpretivism in nature, the research would fall under the category of qualitative research. Therefore, qualitative strategies are best suited for conducting this study. Various research strategies exist for qualitative research, such as case studies, ethnography, grounded theory and phenomenological research. The research seeks to investigate how local governments can be empowered to make cities resilient to disasters in the built environment context, and out of the available qualitative research strategies, case studies have been identified as the most appropriate research strategy for the research discussed in this paper. The paper compares and contrasts the available research strategies and claims the suitability of the case study research strategy, in achieving the aims and objectives of the research. In doing so, the paper outlines the inherent components of the methodology namely, research philosophy, approach, strategy, choice, time horizon and techniques while justifying the suitability of the selected methodology through various research methodology literature

Bellcurve: Built Environment Lifelong Learning Challenging University Responses to Vocational Education: Lifelong University for the Built Environment

BELLCURVE (Built Environment Lifelong Learning Challenging University Responses to Vocational Education) is a European Commission funded research project conducted at the School of the Built Environment, University of Salford, UK, in collaboration with Department of Construction Economics and Property Management, Vilnius Gediminas Technical University, Lithuania and Department of Building Production, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia. This project addressed issues associated with the mismatch between graduate skills and labour market requirements as this mismatch has been identified as one of the main factors behind graduate unemployment and employer dissatisfaction, particularly in the Built Environment (BE) sector. BELLCURVE considered ‘student engagement’ as a continuous through-life process rather than a temporary traditional engagement limited by the course duration. This through-life studentship defines the essence of the new innovative “Lifelong University” concept, whereby providing an opportunity for learners to acquire and develop skills and knowledge enabling responds to changing construction labour market needs on a continuous basis. This requires a reform in governance systems to respond labour market needs effectively while promoting the lifelong learning agenda

Empowering local governments to make a disaster resilient built environment within Sri Lankan Cities

Urban areas are growing very rapidly all over the world, particularly in developing countries. As a result of rapid urbanisation, the world’s population is increasingly concentrated in large cities leading to unplanned urban development with inappropriate and poor quality housing, infrastructure and services. This excessive unplanned urban growth leads to various physical, social and economic vulnerabilities. As a result, the consequences of disasters are highly detrimental when they occur in urban environments. Thus, it has become necessary to strengthen the resilience of cities to disasters. The built environment provides a core to many human activities and plays a critical role in any city. Thus, it is necessary to develop the built environment with an effective degree of resilience, in order to withstand and adapt to the threats of disasters. This requires a serious effort to be made by various stakeholders including governmental and non-governmental institutions. As local governments are responsible for local area development, they have a key role to play in achieving the resilience of the cities under their jurisdiction. Even though there is a growing concern on the role of the local governments in making cities resilient, several incidents have been reported on the inadequate contribution of local governments in taking the lead role of initiating risk reduction. In this context, the research aims to explore and propose mechanisms to empower the local governments to make cities resilient to disasters within the context of the built environment. Accordingly this paper intends to analyse the challenges faced by the Sri Lankan local governments in creating a disaster resilient built environment within their cities and to propose the ways and means of addressing the challenges faced by the local governments. As such, the paper proposes a set of recommendations to empower the Sri Lankan local governments in facilitating city resilience building initiatives in the built environment contex

Empowering local governments to make disaster resilient cities

Disasters either natural or man-made cause a significant impact to the entire world. The occurrence of natural disasters has increased significantly in the recent past resulting a higher number of mortalities and economic and social losses. It is evident that the impacts and severity of natural disasters are linked to the unplanned urban development. Due to rapid urbanisation and population growth the cities are becoming increasingly vulnerable to disasters. Therefore there is a high need for disastersustainable urban areas in today's context, incorporating proper risk reduction mechanisms to make cities resilient for future disasters. This requires a serious effort of various stakeholders including governmental and non-governmental institutions. The local governments being the first responder and the one responsible for community development, has a key role to play in achieving society's resilience to disasters and to ensure the resilience of the cities under their jurisdiction. Even though there is a growing concern among the researchers and practitioners on the role of the local governments in making cities resilient to disasters and contributing for the development of disaster resilient cities, several incidents have been reported on the inadequate contribution of local governments in taking the lead role of disaster risk reduction initiatives. This could mainly be attributed to inadequate financial, manpower and other resources available with local governments, lack of willpower and their failure to make timely decisions due to lack of authority. This has emphasised the need for empowering local governments with improved governance structure and the need for developing capacities to lead the concept of resilience in their respective local areas. Therefore the aim of this research is to develop a framework to empower the local governments to make cities resilient to disasters within the context of built environment and accordingly this paper is focussed on emphasising the need for empowering the local governments. In this context, this paper highlights the need for empowering the local governments and identifies the ways and means of achieving this in the development of the society's resilience to natural disasters. The literature review technique is used to address this potential issue and the findings are justified through various literature gathered from research papers in electronic databases along with conference proceedings and reports published by various institutions

Integrating universities with the built environment practice and the communities in disaster management education

Built environment (BE) practitioners have a key role to play in developing societal resilience to disasters. In doing so, various interactions are needed between BE disciplines and other stakeholders engaged with the disaster management process. Therefore universities conducting courses on disaster management need to consider the needs of these stakeholders in their programme design and delivery. This requires building partnerships between universities, BE practice and other stakeholders engaged in disaster management who are referred to as ‘community’ in this research. Previous research has highlighted the lack of integration between practice, community and university (PCU) in contributing to the societal resilience to disasters and therefore it is very important to strengthen the integration between PCU. Development of such partnerships is a complex task and it is important to identify how PCU integration can take place and how the effectiveness of such inte-gration can be measured. Accordingly, the aim of this paper is to present the initial PCU framework developed as part of an EU funded project, aimed at developing a professional doctorate for disaster resilience in the built environment. The method-ology adopted for this research comprises of a literature review and brainstorming. The paper presents several mechanisms to integrate universities with the BE practice and communities in developing meaningful partnerships in the proposed profession-al doctorate, some of which include, collaborative programme design, delivery, re-search and supervision

Exploring good practice knowledge transfer related to post tsunami housing re-construction in Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka was badly affected by the tsunami that occurred on 26th December 2004. The tsunami destroyed about two-thirds of the Sri Lankan coastline and affected more than 1,000,000 people. It does not only affected the lives of the community, but also had a devastating effect on their housing and livelihoods. The overall loss of 100,000 or more houses due to the tsunami proved to be a major challenge to the emergency response teams and disaster planners. Although several major disasters of varying magnitudes have occurred in the world, the body of knowledge related to post-disaster housing reconstruction and rehabilitation appears fragmented and poorly integrated. This paper attempts to fill this theoretical gap by focusing on the extent to which good practice knowledge transfer helps in overcoming this problem for more effective and efficient delivery of post-tsunami housing in Sri Lanka. The paper applied knowledge transfer principles within the context of the two housing reconstruction strategies employed in post-tsunami housing reconstruction in Sri Lanka; namely donor-driven housing and owner driven housing. The results of this study reveal that the knowledge transfer within this context cannot be simply copied and inserted from one context without any localisation. Therefore, the paper proposes a high-level abstraction of the core principles of community engagement through participatory techniques associated with appropriate capacity and capability building techniques that will enable the various stakeholders to create a new application to suit the appropriate context of the transfer destination (post-tsunami context in Sri Lanka)

Local governments and disaster risk reduction: a conceptual framework

A conceptual framework visually illustrates the linked concepts of a broader research. Hence, it is considered to be a key part of the research design. Therefore, developing a conceptual framework is an important aspect of the research process and guides the researcher in the data collection and analysis. The paper elaborates the conceptual framework of a research study aimed at making recommendations to empower local governments in making disaster resilient built environment within cities. The conceptual framework was developed based on literature review and further refined based on expert opinions. Through the literature review it was able to identify the key concepts for research and these were further refined through the opinions of experts. The key concepts identified are: increased disaster risk in cities; the need for disaster resilient cities; the role of stakeholders in making disaster resilient cities; the role and challenges for local governments in creating disaster resilient cities; and the need for empowering local governments in making cities disaster resilient. The paper discusses these key concepts and explains the development process of the conceptual framework. The process includes, identifying the key concepts, their inter-relationships and the boundary of the study. Accordingly, the conceptual framework illustrates the process for empowering local governments in making disaster resilient built environments within cities