recent earthquake, became a popular option for
reconstruction. The advantage of using vernacular
technologies is that they use local knowledge, skills
and materials, and tend to be affordable. But in
many countries no standards exist for them which
limits their acceptability, (for example because the
regulatory framework does not accommodate them,
or because building professionals, whose studies
focused on modern materials and technologies are
reluctant to venture into unknown territory).
Disaster-resistant building standards can
certainly help reduce the loss of life and property
when natural hazards strike. However, the standards
currently in place in many countries do not reduce
risk for their poor. To achieve this, they need to be
changed, primarily to be made more affordable. If
they are not, they could do more harm than good.
There is a lot of variety in how people in
different countries build, and what disasters they
are vulnerable to. Describing in detail the technical
standards that provide disaster-resistance in all
those different contexts would require a book, not
a simple tool. Besides, there is a growing amount
of literature, (some of which is included in the
Resources section), that describes how particular
ways of building can be made more resistant to a
range of disasters. This tool therefore focuses on
the possible approaches to setting and achieving
an adequate standard of disaster-resistant
construction.
What makes construction vulnerable to
disasters in developing countries?
From assessments of disaster damage in many
countries, we know that the absence of a proper
regulatory framework, its improper implementation
or incomplete use (as highlighted above), is only
one of the factors having an impact on the scale of
damage. Others include:
• Poorly defined knowledge and mapping of
disaster hazards and risks;
• Insufficient awareness of disaster hazards and
risks;
• Lack of preparedness planning or early warning
of impending events;
• Lack of protective infrastructure such as flood
barriers or slope stabilisation;
• Poor quality and unreliability of infrastructure
services;
• Poor quality materials and insufficient quality
control of building techniques;
• Low priority for emergency evacuation and safe
public shelters.
These and other deficiencies in mitigating the
impact of disasters have a number of underlying
causes:
The rapid urbanisation of Lima forced some people to build their
houses on very unstable slopes.
• Widespread poverty;
• Lack of education;
• The need for many poor people to prioritise
immediate needs (ie day to day survival) over
disaster risk
• Rapid urbanisation - including a tendency to
concentrate large populations in vulnerable
locations such as steep slopes or flood plains;
• Lack of secure tenure;
• Landlords placing profit before the safety of
tenants;
• Lack of capacity and resources of local and
central authorities;
• Poor governance, including complex
bureaucracies, a lack of popular voice and
corruption.
Getting the standards right is therefore
not necessarily enough to guarantee reduced
disaster impact. Furthermore, the above factors
may actually hinder both the development and
implementation of appropriate standards.
PCR Tool 3: Learning from Disasters provides
the most common structural factors that lead to
disaster damage to buildings for example a lack
of disaster-resistant features, poor quality work or
materials, or a lack of maintenance. These are the
issues that standards and regulations can improve.
PCR Tool 8: Participatory Design gives some of the
design principles for withstanding major disasters,
which should be considered too.
What difference can standards make?
After almost every major disaster in a developing
country, people have called for building standards
to be tightened and enforced more strictly. After
all, this has worked to reduce the impact of
natural disasters in more developed countries. But
can the same approach work in the developing
world? The above section has already argued that
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