to consider what facilities, infrastructure and
houses are repairable or need to be rebuilt,
what materials could be recycled, and what
additional resources might be needed.. It can
also be used to document and discuss issues of
land ownership and tenure, and to take stock of
any unused land that could serve as an overspill
area or for relocation. Land tenure can pose
difficult problems after a disaster, particularly
where ownership is informal. A series of tools
and case studies for addressing post-disaster
and post-conflict issues of land tenure are under
development by the UN-Habitat Global Land
Tool Network, but these are still at an early draft
stage (see the Resources section).
• Wealth and vulnerability ranking – this is
particularly important for identifying people with
the greatest need, who may require additional
support in order to participate actively in
reconstruction. It can be done using various
stones, twigs, or pieces of paper to represent
different assets.
• Pillars of survival – this is essentially an
assessment of people’s livelihoods and coping
mechanisms. It examines how people cope
in normal circumstances and what they do
when their livelihoods come under stress. It
documents how many strategies people have to
cope with stresses and what these are. It can
also help assess people’s vulnerabilities and
capacities.
• Defining economic activities – this is where
people are invited to describe how they earn/
ed an income, currently and before the disaster,
Those with similar occupations can then form
smaller groups to discuss issues specific to their
livelihood and determine what support they
would need to recover.
• Emergency Market Mapping Analysis (EMMA)
and Participatory Market Systems Analysis
(PMSA) – these are participatory methods to
analyse market systems, in emergency situations
or normal conditions respectively. The analysis
is done with the participation of actors all along
the market chain, and aims to identify and
resolve bottlenecks. These are important tools
as they help to determine for example whether
the materials necessary for emergency shelter or
reconstruction can be provided through regular
market chains, or how local markets and the
livelihoods that depend on those can be restored
(See: Albu (2010) and Albu and Griffith (2005)
in the Resources section).
• Drawing up of seasonal calendars – these are
particularly important when people rely on
farming. They can highlight windows of down-
time in farming activity which can be utilised for
reconstruction activities instead. Daily schedule
timetables can also be useful, particularly
Men carrying part of a destroyed house after floods in 2004 in
Gaibandha, Bangladesh. Materials or components that can be
recovered from destroyed or damaged houses form part of the
resources available to the community.
to highlight women’s daily activities that are
often under-represented in other assessment
methods.
• Stakeholder analysis – this is used to identify
the stakeholders in the development of the
area, and how they interact with each other. It
is useful for communities to consider how the
stakeholders have changed as a result of the
disaster.
• Capacity Analysis – this aims to identify what
skills local people have that could be used in
reconstruction. Linked to this are community
managed resources such as seed banks or
savings and credit activities that can facilitate
people’s reconstruction and recovery efforts.
Local capacities can be identified through
broad assessments such as SWOT (strengths,
weaknesses, opportunities, threats) or through
individual capacity analysis. Developing local
production and markets for building materials
can be important for stimulating the physical
reconstruction process - communities become
less dependent on outside materials that can
be subject to fluctuating prices and availability.
This may require a local resource assessment,
(of materials such as clay, soil, aggregates,
stone, timber or bamboo).
In some circumstances it may not be
necessary to undertake all the above activities
in each location. For example: when some of
the information is already known from official
figures; agencies have already worked with target
communities before a disaster; or information
has been collected in earlier assessments. The
requirements needed to obtain a full assessment
must be determined on a case by case basis.
The above activities are generally relevant when
reconstruction is taking place in the original
community location. In some cases communities
4