Learning from Taiwan Building Resilience

Taiwan has made remarkable achievements in construction quality as proven by the recent earthquake. Though the Mw 7.4 (MMI VIII) earthquake took 13 lives, it saved more lives if it is compared to other incidents. For instance, in Cianjur, Indonesia (2022) Mw 5.6 (MMI VIII) earthquake, the total death toll was 635. Stronger earthquake but fewer casualties.  Both Taiwan and Indonesia, are near the 'Ring of Fire' and are prone to earthquakes. From an engineering perspective, at least there are three initiatives we can learn from Taiwan in protecting their people from collapsing buildings under earthquake load. Those are a strict imposition of building codes, continuous construction market improvement, and innovation.

All requirements in the Building Codes are mandatory to obtain building approval. Furthermore, some requirements mandate some deposit of funds into the government account. There will be consequences if the builders or developers fail to fulfill the requirements as stated in the code. The deposited fund will be confestigated. Therefore, any attempt to save costs should not sacrifice the safety factors by delivering sub-standard construction material or workmanship. This regulation becomes effective since there is effective monitoring and a range of sanctions.

To survive in the construction market, builders and construction industries have not only adhered to the code but also successfully improved efficiency. Through years of improvement, Taiwan’s construction industry was found to have higher labor efficiency than mainland China. Along with the labor, their management and technical capacities are increasing.

If the market continuously improves, it will lead to more innovative construction methodologies and technologies. To reduce the impact, we must deliver robust structures and install elements that may dampen or absorb earthquake load. These elements may be pendulums or base isolation. As installed at the Taipei 101 skyscraper, if the building sways, the pendulum can suppress motion by applying forces in opposite directions.

How can this be applied to housing industries in developing countries? It can be applied, but it should not jump to the innovation. It should follow the natural law. Enforcing the code may lead to improvement in the construction market. This means the whole ecosystem must abide by the code, i.e., homeowners, builders, construction material vendors, and government. There should be country-wide education and training for builders. Sending engineers and skilled builders to rural areas to train local builders. Continuous campaign on build-back-safer and seismic retrofitting. Provision of loans for house repair and retrofitting. Along with the market improvement, there will be fair competition to find better ways to increase safety and reduce costs through innovation. At this point, academia should give their input that the innovation is fulfilling the scientific aspects.

Arwin Soelaksono

Screening on seismic vulnerabilities of high-rise urban buildings

The Turkiye earthquake sent an important message to all governments and construction practitioners. Massive damages can happen anywhere at any time to vulnerable buildings due to earthquake hazards. Newer buildings usually are less vulnerable due to improved building codes, particularly in high-rise steel and concrete frame buildings.[i] The key word is abiding by the building code and renewed building code. For a moment, let us keep aside the improvement of building codes as structural engineers and government who, from their studies, have to formulate a new code to follow. This writing is focused on ensuring safe structures where many people already dwell, for which government, construction, shelter, and settlement (S&S) practitioners are responsible.

Are multi-stories building in our areas safe? Were they constructed following the code, and their current usage is according to where it was designed? If the structure would damage or collapses, those affected are not only people who dwell and work in the building. Their neighbor, local livelihood, and public services will also be affected. Hence, the government and building owners have to conduct screening on its safety to minimize the risk and, at the same time to provide proper assistance when the hazard turns into a disaster.

Screening and analyzing risks of high-rise buildings

There are more than 23,000 high-rise buildings above 100 m in height worldwide.[ii] These buildings are exposed to hazards, but their vulnerabilities depend on age, height, use, building quality, subsoil, symmetry, and regularity.[iii] For instance, regular and symmetrical buildings are more robust than irregular structures such as L-shape, which might have additional loads, such as twists, due to earthquakes. On the age part, for instance, on screening 98 high-rise buildings with 8-15 floors in Surabaya, Indonesia. It was found that 21 buildings have fallen into the vulnerable category due to being built before 2002, in which the earthquake regulations have not been applied in Indonesia.[iv]

Since many buildings have to be assessed on their seismic vulnerability, large-scale rapid screening should be conducted. Currently, some tools can be used, such as FEMA P-154 Rapid Visual Screening[vii], there is a web-based[v], and also there is an Android application[vi].  But even if large-scale screening using those tools is launched, the screening quality will depend on the engineers’ capacities and experiences. Those data should be analyzed and interpreted by experienced engineers to identify the vulnerability and, later on, how to strengthen them seismically. Getting the screening recommendations will take considerable time as so many buildings need to be checked.

Even if the recommendation reaches the building owners, there is no guarantee they will immediately strengthen it even if they know their building is vulnerable to earthquake. Seismic strengthening, even if it is more economical rather than building a new one after a disaster, many people still need to find this initiative as an investment. It is increasingly costly if there are many vulnerable parts in the building. On the other hand, there is no enforcement for the building owner to retrofit their buildings seismically. Also, there is no incentive for building owners to apply retrofitting. Hence, there should be regulations and incentives that every building owner can be responsible for the safety of their buildings, whether it is an apartment or an office building.

Risk reduction measures and preparing the response in the urban context

The data and analysis are valuable information for the government and S&S practitioners. The risk and its magnitude can be mapped for contingency planning. For instance, how many buildings, local businesses, and public services would be affected if an earthquake happened in a particular magnitude? There should be sufficient local capacities to respond to the disaster at desirable times.

The developed local capacities should be able to support affected people who lost their dwellings according to their circumstances and recovery pathways. The support also should not diminish the affected people’s capacities to self-recover. On the other hand, government and S&S practitioners should strengthen the self-recover initiatives with sound technical guidance. This is to ensure a safer rebuild in more sustainable ways.

As other sectors should also be involved in recovery, local government and the S&S community should support the market’s reopening through shelter assistance. The assistance should trigger a multiplier effect through the construction job market and building material market, which is massively needed during rebuilding. In many parts of the world, the construction sector in high-rise buildings is widely known as the prime mover of economic activities. They will draw other businesses to participate, such as transportation that brings construction materials, restaurants, communications, etc. The government should have a strategy to maintain market stability; otherwise, at some point, there will be a scarcity of construction materials or the job market. This instability would lead to inflation which might hamper the reconstruction process.

S&S practitioners might provide training for builders to improve construction practices and help them obtain builder certificates, which also need to work on. These builders with particular skills can work in middle or high-rise building construction since workers must show their credentials before being hired.

All of these are to improve responder capacity on the whole level, from the beginning, which is preparedness measures to the reconstruction phases. On the other hand, if the building owners follow the recommendation from the screening, many buildings can be seismically strengthened, then the level of damage will not be massive.

Arwin Soelaksono

Photo taken by: Hazal Güverçinci

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[i] Cochrane S.W., Schaad, W.H. Assessment of Earthquake vulnerability of buildings. 1992

[ii] https://www.integralrisk.global/how-many-high-rise-buildings-are-there-in-the-world/

[iii] Cochrane S.W., Schaad, W.H. Assessment of Earthquake vulnerability of buildings. 1992

[iv] Wahyu Riyanto et al 2020 IOP Conf. Ser.: Mater. Sci. Eng. 739 012040` Earthquake Vulnerability Assessment of High-Rise Buildings in Surabaya using RViSITS Android Application

[v] Kassem. M.M, et. al. Assessment of Seismic Building Vulnerability Using Rapid Visual Screening Method through Web-Based Application for Malaysia. 2021

[vi] Wahyu Riyanto et al 2020 IOP Conf. Ser.: Mater. Sci. Eng. 739 012040` Earthquake Vulnerability Assessment of High-Rise Buildings in Surabaya using RViSITS Android Application

[vii] Rapid Visual Screening of Buildings for Potential Seismic Hazards: A Handbook Third Edition FEMA P-154 / January 2015 

Community Based Seismic Retrofitting Program for Disaster Risk Reduction

Seismic retrofitting improves community resilience on housing. Even it is smaller activities compare to the post-disaster reconstruction. It is still workable even during Covid-19 pandemic on reducing earthquake risk on densely populated houses. This writing is based on retrofitting program implemented by Indonesian Red Cross and supported by the American Red Cross and Build Change, and funded by USAID. The program takes place in Indonesia at a city and at a sub-district which are located at earthquake prone area.

Many houses were poorly built in the earthquake prone area; therefore, they are in vulnerable state. Homeowners might not realize that they are at risk until earthquake with certain magnitude occurs. Their houses might collapse or might have significant damage. Therefore, these houses need to be seismically strengthened as a disaster risk reduction measure. In densely populated community this initiative become more crucial since large-scale houses might collapse if earthquake occur. Moreover, the debris might block their narrow evacuation route. Even retrofitting is less expensive compared to the rebuilding cost, but due to unavailability of funding more people reluctant to retrofit their houses.  During the program implementation, several initiatives have been taken to promote seismic retrofitting and strengthened with the community engagement initiatives. All of these are to create retrofitting demand at community level.

Seismic retrofitting and disaster risk reduction

Photo: Retrofitting with conventional method

Seismic retrofitting is to modify the existing structures to make them more resistant to the seismic activity due to the earthquakes. After the retrofitting, the structure could be damaged by the earthquake at certain elements such as beams but must not catastrophically collapse. Retrofitted house might prevent sudden failure which might cause its dwellers get injured. Seismic retrofitting can be done either in recovery or in preparedness setting. But to carry it out under homeowners’ initiative on preparedness setting is bit difficult compare on post-disaster recovery. During recovery process the house owners have the urgency to repair and retrofit their houses. On the other hand, without disaster occurrence homeowners tend to put retrofitting below other priorities.

There are similarities whether it is in recovery context and preparedness setting. Retrofitting is intended not to demolish the house but to strengthen it. It is the cost, to begin with. Cost-benefit assessment is used to evaluate the effectiveness of various seismic retrofit strategies to address concerns about earthquake safety and damage to older concrete frame buildings. When houses evaluated on the basis of repair costs only, the maximum cost of retrofit measures that offer a positive rate of return is 10% to 30% of the building replacement value.[i] Secondly, retrofit need skilled masons and under experienced technical person supervision. It is because seismic retrofitting need’s structure evaluation to check its vulnerability, design and then the construction work itself.

Since the cost is less than to construct from foundation to the roof, retrofitting can be implemented in every economic situation. During economic slowdown, retrofitting provides important contribution to the local economy. The construction work will provide job for builders and workers from other related sectors. Even it is a small-scale activity compared to the common construction work, the construction process needs inputs from other industries and production factors. This could generate considerable employment through multiplier effects.[ii] But its impact on the economy still depends on the volume of the retrofitting work within the area. The bigger the demand it will bring more resources and increase in economic activities. Moreover, the retrofitting cost might even less than 30%, if the activities reach economies of scale.

Naturally construction works always need time to reach the pace and amount of work of economies of scale. Surely kickstart always not easy and simple. It needs preparation such as training for builders, construction material provision, structure assessment and lastly homeowner confidence on retrofitting. Therefore, to ensure the retrofitting program can be implemented those for aspects should be prepared. In this writing, as it will be focused on the community engagement.

Challenges on proper construction and retrofitting

In every country the Government issued Building Codes that the people need to follow to ensure that they can have robust and earthquake resistant structure. The code also available for structural elements such as beam, column and foundation. The code also expected to be a guidance for design and prerequisite to get building permit. But the challenge is on the compliance. In the developing world, the compliance mostly only happens at multi story buildings not at one or two story landed houses. The situation even more challenging in the rural since the monitoring for compliance and enforcement is quite rare. In most countries, house builders or masons do not think that they are responsible for the vulnerability or collapse of the houses they constructed[iii].

Photo: Brick gabble wall without concrete frame

In rural area construction practices are far different from the code. The builders are confident about the safety of the houses which they constructed although most of builders do not know the building codes[iv]. For instance, in a village in in Sukabumi, West Java, Indonesia the houses have no columns. The builders laid the brick at the stretcher face not at their bed. Besides of the ignorance of the codes, people done this because they want to save money by putting less brick. Another example is how the homeowners and builders construct brick gable wall. Since concrete structure is being considered costly, the builders constructed it without concrete frame which make their houses are quite vulnerable when the earthquake occur. The risks are when the earthquake occurs, the brick gable wall might fall off. Surely it can endanger the house owner since it is catastrophic.

Ignorance of the Building Codes is the first barrier to have safe structure. The next barrier is the economic cost of retrofitting. Currently, retrofitting is at the supply driven rather than demand driven as homeowners are heavily dependent on grant or financial incentives. homeowners are unwilling to invest in their house as the house is not a source of income for them and seismic safety is not a priority for them.[v]

If the people are willing put themselves at risks by putting no column at the wall it will be difficult to persuade them to retrofit their house. Some people put the retrofitting at lower priorities then other needs, even though they received the information on earthquake risks. Earthquake is not always occurred regularly like flooding which has seasonal occurrence. People easily forgotten. Even if people have sufficient money, they want to enlarge the houses or just put new paint in their houses.

Another challenge on retrofitting is unavailability skilled builders and proper construction material which need to be used in retrofitting. This can be easily understood since retrofitting is not common in the area therefore it is difficult to find builders which have retrofitting skills. Also, if most of the houses in the area were built without following the Building Code, then it is difficult to find construction material as directed in the code, for instance on using steel deformed rebar. Steel deformed rebar is prerequisite for earthquake resistance reinforced concrete structure. In those area, the demand for deformed rebar is less than the smooth rebar, hence the deformed rebar become expensive.

Creating the demand for retrofitting

Provision of skilled builders and retrofitting material is directly proportional to the demand for retrofitting. The more people want to retrofit their houses the more builders come and work in the area. New builders will be introduced to the retrofitting technique by the skilled builders, as they will work as an intern. More construction material will be available due to the needs of ongoing retrofitting work. Then how to increase the retrofitting demand?

Photo: Retrofitted house using Ferrocement technique which developed by Dr. Teddy Boen

The recent development, many retrofit strategies are feasible and several traditional and innovative options are available to engineers[vi]. There are research and studies on retrofitting which can be implemented on using available material and with affordable price. For instance, ferrocement[vii] technique which developed by Dr. Teddy Boen, can be implemented with simple technique and at an affordable cost. And depends on the needs, homeowners also have the option on choosing conventional method by adding seismic resistance attribute to particular structural element.

Other than the engineering approaches is the encouragement with social language using the positive messages, i.e. homeowners are crucial to be convinced that the investment in safer housing will eventually prove to be worthwhile.[viii] On the other hand from the negative messages, it is also important to increase disaster imagination of the people to understand the importance of seismic retrofit of weaker houses that is the main cause of casualty and to create some social systems by which homeowners are encouraged to retrofit their own weaker houses by themselves.[ix] These initiatives should carried out by trained community volunteers.[x]

Other initiatives to create demand is through connecting the people with the banking institution. Some of banks have financial loan for house renovation but they do not have loan for retrofitting. The bank has been approached and currently is calculating the potential market and benefit of the loan program.

Currently Indonesian Red Cross is developing strategic level collaboration with the Public Works and Housing, to re-shape the government program. It is expected that the current house renovation program which funded by government can be changed to house retrofitting. More retrofitted houses also mean more training opportunity for the builders.

Photo: Training of community volunteers to equipped them on their role as Retrofitting Agents. 

Another campaign done by the trained community volunteers who are using the retrofitted houses as retrofitting showcase. People invited to visit the houses, discuss with the homeowners and trained community volunteers. This campaign was launched to create bandwagon effect in the community. The Community Volunteers acted as Retrofitting Agent visited homeowners door-to-door sending the messages of retrofitting. 

Still, more effort needs to be made. Supply chain is one important area need to be developed. The need of affordable construction and retrofitting material such as deformed bar, wire mesh, Polypropylene (PP) bands or fiber-reinforced paint should be available in local shop. At the end it will reduce the cost.

Collaboration with other humanitarian organization program, such as livelihood and others, need to be developed. Improved quality of living of the society will increase homeowners’ capacities and then at the end they may retrofit their houses.

All of these should be seen as approaches which can strengthen the community effort, since the retrofitting awareness should be a bottom-up initiatives. Homeowners who eventually aware on earthquake risk reduction should be able to connect with available retrofitting resources. Then at the end the retrofitting can be implemented and initiated by the community.

 Arwin Soelaksono

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[i] Liel, Abbie & Deierlein, Gregory. (2013). Cost-Benefit Evaluation of Seismic Risk Mitigation Alternatives for Older Concrete Frame Buildings. Earthquake Spectra. 29. 1391-1411. 10.1193/030911EQS040M.

[ii] Wibowo, M. Agung. The Contribution of The Construction Industry to the Economy of Indonesia: A Systemic Approach (2009)

[iii] Okazaki, K and T. Saito.   Seismic Risk Perception Concerning Non-engineered Houses (2012)

[iv] ibid.

[v] Build Change, 2019.

[vi] Zerbin, Matteo . et. al. Sustainable retrofit design of RC frames evaluated for different seismic demand (2015)

[vii] Boen, Teddy. Retrofit Bangunan Yang Rusak Akibat Gempa , 2015, 2019 https://www.teddyboen.com/Retrofit_Bangunan_yang_Rusak_akibat_Gempa.html

[viii] Okazaki, Kenji et. al. Study on willingness of the residents in seismic retrofitting of the house - comparison among Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, Turkey, The Philippines, Fiji, and Japan

[ix] Sathiparan, Navaratnarajah. Mesh type seismic retrofitting for masonry structures: critical issues and possible strategies. European Journal of Environmental and Civil Engineering. Volume 19, 2015

[x] In Indonesian Red Cross (PMI) program, supported by the American Red Cross and Build Change and funded by the USAID, the trained community volunteers (known as Community Based Action Team) acted as Retrofitting Agents. They have been trained how to spot vulnerabilities, provide retrofitting option and solution including calculating retrofitting budget. On their role the Retrofitting Agents are equipped by Retrofitting field guide the help them during house visits and encourage their neighbors to retrofit their houses.

Improving post-disaster housing reconstruction based on Nepal recovery S-curve

S-curve is commonly used in construction project management tool for planning the work and its milestone and monitoring its progress. S-curve already proven as powerful tool whether in sophisticated construction work also for humanitarian works in rural and remote places. This article offers insight on how post-disaster housing recovery can be improved. It can also be applied in other regions who promote housing recovery with owner-driven setting.

Build Back Circular is the newest approach for climate friendly housing recovery

The slogan Build Back Better introduced on 2006, on housing recovery following the Aceh tsunami. However, now the jargon seems insufficient with the current challenges. In every post-disaster reconstruction, the process is always followed by the potential of environmental degradation. From the perspective of the climate crisis, this process is exacerbated by increasing pollution. Therefore, nowadays the approach being offered for housing recovery is Build Back Circular.[i]

Difficulties in implementing Build Back Better 

Under the principle of Build Back Better (BBB), all new house rebuilds, must be safe from disasters. Moreover, it includes efforts to prevent re-creating or exacerbating pre-disaster vulnerabilities in the process of reconstruction. By strategically embracing and optimizing institutional, financial, political, and human opportunities, positive externalities are believed to arise from disasters, which can lead to safer and more resilient communities.[ii]

But, it is difficult for affected people to perceive the goal of BBB. Many experiences show there was communication gap and different expectation inhibit people to understand the essence of BBB. Larger parts of affected communities assumed that BBB means more aesthetically or bigger houses. Learned from Aceh recovery, the builders, which are the government, donor agencies and humanitarian agencies, they mostly used contractors. This situation is understandable since it is exceedingly difficult for people to build their own houses with concrete and brick walls and at the same time, fulfilling quality requirements. In fact, not all contractors have sufficient capacity.

This condition also weakens the community's ability to carry out the so-called owner-driven recovery. From donor driven perspective, the builder provides housing solution. Start from planning, design, constructing and the homeowner will receive a house such as turn-key project. Many builders provide only single design but was expected to fits all. Moreover not only one house design, the construction material are similar for each beneficiary. But, not everyone wants a house with building materials or designs as provided by the aid provider. Because every family tends to choose building materials and designs as they think are suitable and comfortable with.

Owner-driven recovery and Build Back Safer 

Aceh was special case in post-disaster recovery. It was the biggest funding ever committed for the relief effort with total commitment of USD 7.7 billion.[iii] During its peak time there were 124 International NGOs, dozens of United Nations organizations and 430 local NGOs[iv] with more than 5,000 international humanitarian workers.[v] This massive support is heavy with donor driven initiatives.

But on many post-disaster recoveries, 85% recovery done by the homeowners themselves without humanitarian or governmental shelter assistance, with little understanding to build a robust structure. They built houses with their traditional practices which made them still in vulnerable state. To reach and support homeowners in self-recovery processes, there is a need to develop an adequate understanding of how knowledge exchange and adoption in such interactions can be more effective[vi].

Therefore, the concept of Build Back Safer (BBS) was introduced to educate homeowners on rebuilding their houses properly. It is a knowledge transfer process with training, messaging, and technical assistance to ensure informal recovery can also achieve safer recovery.

After the 2009 West Sumatra earthquake, the term BBS, became popular. The community has more role and opportunity in owner-driven setting. Recovery is in accordance with their needs, abilities, and time. The role of the government and humanitarian agencies are to help by providing some amount of funding and technical support. The assistance is to ensure that the house being repaired or built meets the requirements for earthquake safety. Because the amount of funding assistance is only some part of the cost to build a complete house, people need to add from their savings. The result is that people are wiser and eventually maximize with what they have. This includes using reusable of building materials. The more homeowners to reuse the wooden door frames, also doors and windows to their repaired or newly built house, the more environmental-friendly recovery they will get.

Then it is realized that saving the environment is as urgent as self-recovery. If it is not carefully monitored, there will be massive usage of forest products in the form of wood or its processed products. Then illegal logging could occur which can lead to other disasters such as landslides and flash floods.

In previous recoveries some agencies were using fabricated product to form house structures, which those brought from other cities and even other islands. The use of building materials imported from big cities, which are expected to accelerate the reconstruction process, was also not the best option. There are at least two concerns in these initiatives. The more sophisticated the building technology used, then less space for self-recovery will be. The homeowners and local builders with no experience in the technology have to give the job to those who have sufficient experience. These people usually from outside of the affected area, also it might be from other islands. Moreover, transportation of construction material between provinces and even shipment between islands will increase CO₂ emissions into the atmosphere.

Realizing a Back Build Circular 

Nowadays BBS concept seems not sufficient anymore. Due to climate crisis we need to press on to achieve lower carbon emission from the recovery process. Build Back Circular (BBC) is a perfect combination of safe self-recovery and rescuing the planet from climate crisis. From the Circular Economy concept, materials are used repeatedly until all functions and values ​​are used up. It is different from the linear concept where material is taken from the earth, produced, used and finally disposed of as waste. The material continues to be recycled until the amount of waste produced is getting smaller.[vii]

The current concept of circular economy shown in the graph below[viii]. The circular economy message is that the inner circles demand less resources and energy and are more economic as well. The time the value in the resources spends within the inner circles should be maximized.[ix]

From the BBC concept, the community is encouraged to retrofit or to repair houses by adding earthquake safe attributes to make it earthquake safe. Building a new house is only an option when retrofitting is not possible. Of course, with maximizing the reuse of building materials, such as wood, bricks and other materials.

The BBC is also pushing for local economic recovery. This is because fewer building materials are used from outside the area, except for those that cannot be produced locally, such as cement and iron. Instead of using masons from other area because they use sophisticated building technology, they use local product so local construction workers have more job opportunities.

For the BBC to be realized, it is necessary to have policies from the Central and Local Governments to promote self-recovery. There is no need to worry if recovery is slow, because basically post-disaster recovery always takes time. The government needs to be present to strengthen community capacity in self-recovery through funding support, reconstruction guidance and monitoring. This approach should also apply to humanitarian agencies who help the affected people. The strategy is to train masons and homeowners as many as possible on how to retrofit and to rebuild safer houses. Humanitarian agencies can be partner with the government by providing technical support due to high need of post-disaster recovery experts.

Strengthen BBC with Supply and Demand approach

Then how to reuse or remanufacture of construction material as many as possible. All stakeholders have to work on supply or demand side. From the demand side, the government need to issue policy on prioritizing local construction material. The policy should also discourage on using building material if its component contains mostly imported from other area. The demand also can be increased through continuous education to homeowners and builders.

One of big issue in the wake of disaster is the debris. Following the earthquake, the homeowner still can collect salvage material to be reused. But if the hazard is flash flood or landslide or liquefaction and even tsunami, debris become more serious problem.

The 2004 tsunami left an estimated 10 million cubic meters of debris in Aceh, most of it washed into the ocean and left Banda Aceh with mountains of debris up to 6 km inland. At first, many survivors simply burned wood and other garbage. But authorities discouraged them from doing that because it polluted the air and could expose them to harmful toxins. Three months after the tsunami, the UNDP started a USD 40.5 million recycling programme that employed 400,000 temporary workers to pluck wood and stone from the rubble and use the materials to rebuild roads and houses and to make furniture. The recycled waste was used to reconstruct 100km of roads and manufacture 12,000 pieces of wooden furniture.[x]

Hence, there are a lot of opportunities on managing debris and turn it to construction material to support recovery. For instance, combining livelihood program with housing reconstruction by provision of funding for construction material workshop. This kind of workshop can recycle building materials. The community can repair or trade used building materials so that they can be reused. This kind of workshop will reduce the production of new building materials which means that it is also more efficient in CO₂ emissions. The more building materials provided locally, the more irrelevant the dependence on building materials from outside the area. In the end people can be left in a safe house and the climate can be maintained.

Education to homeowners and local builders also important. They need to salvage the material as soon as possible. From Yogyakarta earthquake 2006, on the first month, some of the survivors cleared their houses from debris and collecting bricks and wooden material which they thought still can be used.[xi] This will be the first message of recovery to the affected people. As they will lead their own recovery, this effort will help the to realize what kind of recovery they might expect. Once the assistance from government or NGO present in their area, they can decide to repair or rebuild their houses according to what they already have or might receive.

Lombok homeowner salvage his house material following the earthquake 2018

Build Back Circular is achievable 

Then at least there are three initiatives to ensure BBC can be implemented. 

Firstly, policy from the government to encourage retrofitting and maximize the usage of reuse material. Provision of funding and training to the local building material workshop to turn debris to construction material. Lastly education to reuse as many as possible the construction material. 

Combination of those three will bring benefit not only to the affected people but also protecting the climate from excessive use on provision of new construction material which have impact on CO₂ .  

Arwin Soelaksono

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[i] IFRC - Shelter Research Unit. Humanitarian Circular Exchange - Making space for makerspaces in the Circular Economy of post-disaster shelter and reconstruction. Presentation on Climate Red 2020

[ii] Fernandez, Glenn. Ahmed, Iftekhar. “Build back better” approach to disaster recovery: Research trends since 2006. (2019)

[iii] Jock McKeon, “Aceh Reconstruction Expenditure Update June 2007 data” The World Bank, November 2007

[iv] Amir Sodikin quoted John Clark from World Bank, “Sia-sia Rekonstruksi Jika Tanpa Rumah”, Kompas Cyber Media, December 24, 2005

[v] Carsten Völz, "Koordinasi kemanusiaan di Indonesia: dari sudut pandang LSM" Forced Migration Review Edisi Khusus Agustus 2005, Refugee Studies Centre, University of Oxford, pp.26

[vi] Hendriks, Eefje et. al. Knowledge exchange and adoption to enable safer post-disaster self-recovery. Journal of Integrated Disaster Risk Management. 2018.

[vii] Korhonen,Jouni. et. al. Circular Economy: The Concept and its Limitations. Ecological Economics 143 (2018) 37–46

[viii] Mihelcic, J.R. et. al. Sustainability science and engineering: the emergence of a new metadiscipline. Environ. Sci. Technol. 2003 (37), 5314–5324

[ix] Korhonen,Jouni. et. al. Circular Economy: The Concept and its Limitations. Ecological Economics 143 (2018) 37–46

[x] South China Morning Post 21 December 2014. Indonesia's Banda Aceh, 10 years on, is clear of tsunami debris, but environmental hazards may remain. https://www.scmp.com/news/asia/article/1667595/indonesias-banda-aceh-10-years-clear-tsunami-debris-environmental-hazards

[xi] DW. Sebulan Setelah Gempa Yogyakarta. 28 June 2006. https://www.dw.com/id/sebulan-setelah-gempa-yogyakarta/a-2958069