Likelihood of Innovative Construction Techniques to Build Disaster Resilience for Vernacular Housing in the Highland of Central Vietnam

Disaster mitigation for marginal communities has become one of the most significant development goals of the 21st century. Vietnam has been reported one of the five most vulnerable nations in the world to climate change and so serves as a useful case study in developing appropriate housing solutions after disasters. In addition, some local communities in remote mountainous areas of Vietnam still keep strong vernacular traditions in their housing, especially the typical timber house-on-stilt, which need intense consideration before employing any new techniques of disaster mitigation on them. Perceptions on how to develop a sustainable housing solution for such communities, therefore, is still controversial with very few useful options developed to date. The paper investigates the existing unsafe conditions of traditional houses of a local community in the central highland of Vietnam, exposed to natural disasters, together with an identification of several traditional features of this housing that would be needed to preserve in future construction. Some important gaps of these traditional houses in terms of disaster risk reduction are then displayed to show opportunities where new construction techniques have a high possibility to perform against extreme climate events.

Consideration of the Planning for the Reconstruction of Aging and Dilapidated Houses in Beijing's Old Town

In the past 41 years after the foundingof the People’s Repubilc, many buildings,with a total floor space of more than80,000,000 square meters, have been

An Inquiry into Success Factors for Post-disaster Housing Reconstruction Projects: A Case of Kerala, South India

The 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami triggered significant destruction to housing and related infrastructures across various coastal districts of south India.Research shows that tsunami reconstruction projects in Kerala experienced different degrees of success and failure.On this background,this study explored factors that contributed to the successful implementation of tsunami housing projects in Kerala by(1)consolidating various critical success factors(CSFs)for post-disaster reconstruction(PDR)projects under‘‘project management success traits’’through content analysis of existing literature;(2)deriving a conceptual model that envisages project success in PDR contexts;and(3)assessing the impacts of those success traits on tsunami housing projects using confirmatory factor analysis.Necessary data were gathered through a survey of various stakeholders involved in tsunami reconstruction projects in Kerala using structured questionnaires.The research revealed that PDR project success is attributed to critical dimensions of project management such as institutional mechanisms,reconstruction strategies,project implementation,and stakeholder management.A conceptual model with the interplay of project success,success traits,as well as their CSFs identified the project management actions that must be monitored during reconstruction.Since the project management approach is widely recognized for PDR projects,these success traits hold huge potential for effective organization and management of housing reconstruction projects.The study also helped to identify project management traits that need improvements for the successful implementation of post-disaster housing projects in Kerala.Thus the research findings can serve as a foundational study for formulating project management strategies appropriate to PDR projects in Kerala.