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This paper aims to report the findings of a study, which analysed the strengths and limitations of two distinct concepts used for post‐disaster housing reconstruction, namely, the donor‐driven and owner‐driven approaches.

Data were gathered through interviews, questionnaire survey and observations from government, non‐government organizations and the beneficiaries of owner‐driven and donor‐driven programmes in one of the affected districts.

The paper reveals that beneficiary satisfaction is higher on owner‐driven approach compared to the donor‐driven approach. Further, imposition of the buffer zone, non‐availability of suitable land and capacity constraints of the construction industry are identified as critical factors affecting the success of donor‐driven housing programme.

It was assumed that the quickest and most effective way to rebuild houses after a disaster is to employ the “donor‐driven” approach, where the government or an external funding agency leads the reconstruction process with the help of consultants and contractors procured for the project. Contrary to this popular view, this paper finds that there are limitations in this approach and that it may lead to housing that does not respond to needs of victims.

This paper examines the strengths and weaknesses of the two strategies used in housing reconstruction and highlights the need for building regulations and technical assistance as key to overcome limitations of the owner‐driven approach.

The purpose of this paper is to study the feasibility of using the agency-driven housing approach in a post-conflict context. This paper aims to identify the challenges in applying the agency-driven approach within the context of post-conflict housing reconstruction in the Gaza Strip.

In this paper, a qualitative research approach was adopted. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with key stakeholders and representatives of project beneficiaries. Secondary data drawn from academic papers, articles, technical reports and media reports were also obtained.

The findings support doubts in the literature about the feasibility of using the agency-driven approach in post-conflict housing reconstruction. The paper concludes that an agency-driven housing project successfully constructed a few thousand housing units and provided thousands of temporary job opportunities. The project encountered challenges in beneficiary selection; affordability of housing units; access to building materials; governance issues; and delays in implementation.

This paper offers valuable lessons for decision-makers, planners and architects to build on in future endeavours in Gaza and in similar contexts.

This paper particularly confirms the challenges of using the agency-driven housing approach in a post-conflict setting. These findings are useful for policy-makers to develop relevant strategies to address housing needs in the Gaza Strip.

Through an overview of Goal's post tsunami shelter and reconstruction programme in Sri Lanka this study aims to highlight how design and implementation approaches had to continuously evolve in order to respond to changes in pace, priorities and policy as relief moved into recovery then permanent rehabilitation.

The study begins by describing the Buffer Zone Policy that prohibited construction within a certain distance from the sea and how the policy impeded the construction of permanent housing in some areas through lack of suitable relocation sites. Then using transitional shelter as an example, the effects of the persistence of the policy when most actors anticipated change can be seen in modifications to shelters driven mainly by comfort criteria as their occupancy had to be extended from an initially predicted six month period to around two years.

Following this, an overview of the permanent housing programme shows how an owner driven housing approach was chosen as an appropriate means of provision and how the process was developed through a local partnership. In this programme the owners' capacity to design and manage their own house construction was developed with the understanding that houses could be incrementally extended by the owner following the completion of the programme. Then, as the late change in the Buffer Zone Policy resulted in a sudden up-scaling of the project on a very limited time-frame, the study shows how, whilst still catering for individual aspirations and personal "ownership" in design and implementation, standardised designs were introduced to speed up the building process.

The study concludes by emphasising the need for flexibility in design and implementation in order to provide the best service to affected people within the ever-changing environment of disaster response.

After tsunami 2004, it was estimated that more than 98,000 permanent houses had to be rebuilt. However, ten years on, as communities, are they satisfied in their new homes? What are the indicators affecting the long-term satisfaction of resettled communities in relation to their new permanent houses. The purpose of this paper is to qualitatively evaluate the level of long-term satisfaction of two tsunami affected resettled communities in Sri Lanka in a bid to identify the indicators affecting the long-term satisfaction of post disaster resettled communities in relation to permanent housing.

In addition to the thorough literature review conducted to evaluate the state of the art in the subject area, a series of interviews were conducted with experts and tsunami affected communities in Sri Lanka to gather primary data for this research. The literature review is used to establish the initial list of indicators of long-term satisfaction of resettlements. The expert interviews and the community interviews were used to verify and refine the initially identified indicators.

A sustainable resettlement programme is just not merely reconstruction of a set of houses. A resettlement programme should re-establish the socio-economic and cultural life of people. Reconstruction of a house does not solve the housing issue; it is vital to look in to the indicators which can convert a house into a home and the surrounding into a neighbourhood.

This paper makes a significant contribution in terms of identifying indicators affecting the long-term community satisfaction with resettlement programmes taking into account economic, social and cultural factors with a special emphasis on post tsunami resettlements in Sri Lanka.

A set of guidelines widely agreed by the international humanitarian aid community, such as the Sphere Handbook, is currently lacking for permanent housing reconstruction in developing countries. The paper aims to address this gap by reviewing the field and presenting a set of selected examples that offer lessons for informing, developing and promoting wider good practice.

An extensive literature review on post‐disaster housing reconstruction in developing countries pointed to the significant impacts of disasters on housing in developing countries and the great challenges involved in the reconstruction process; it also allowed identifying efforts at framing good practice guidelines by humanitarian and other agencies.

The paper finds that, while the review largely indicated the major challenges and shortcomings in the field, it also allowed identifying some examples of good practice and the reasons for their effectiveness.

As argued here, there are a number of independent guidelines for post‐disaster reconstruction in developing countries, but hardly any which are widely endorsed and can be followed by humanitarian agencies. The paper therefore draws together the key issues and examples of good practice as a basis for informing the development of guidelines.

This paper draws on research conducted after the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami in Aceh, Indonesia, where more than 100,000 houses were built by various agencies following the massive disaster. The research reveals that the residents in Aceh rarely see their reconstruction houses as ‘complete’ and modify these houses to suit their personal needs and aspirations. The relationships between the global and regional forces that drive reconstruction agency housing procurement and production are explored, and compared with the outcomes of user-initiated modifications to the houses. From the hundreds of houses reviewed, here four houses are discussed in detail, built by the Asian Development Bank, representing a global paradigm, and Bank Mandiri, representing a regional paradigm. These houses were modified and extended to varying degrees by their residents, exemplifying the ways in which reconstruction agencies, perhaps inadvertently, empowered residents by enabling them to improve their own housing. The outcomes of this transformation process underscore the advantages of a hybrid between global and regional styles, and the desire of the reconstruction housing residents to recapture some of the local housing culture and reflect regional housing characteristics.

After the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, major resettlement programmes were implemented in the affected countries including Sri Lanka and India. New settlements were built from scratch on vacant land, which consisted of building new houses and provision of infrastructure and services. Some of these programmes in Sri Lanka and India were reviewed in an Australian Research Council (ARC) funded research and this paper presents and analyses some of the findings of the research. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The research is based on interviews of residents and representatives of agencies involved in planning and implementing the resettlement programmes, and on-site observations. The investigation examined critical aspects of settlement development including site planning, transport, drainage, water supply, sanitation, waste management and security.

Very little site planning guidelines were available specifically for resettlement programmes; in both the case study countries, general planning guidelines were applied. Provision and management of infrastructure and services presents great challenges in developing countries as high capital investment and good technical skills for design, implementation and maintenance are required. Some of the resettlement schemes had the advantage of being centrally located and hence had access to schools, health centres and other facilities. However, others were in isolated locations and beneficiaries faced problems in accessing basic facilities. Drainage was a problem – most schemes did not have any surface drainage plan; low areas had not been elevated, slopes not levelled, and land not compacted before construction. Electricity and water supply had been provided in all the programmes, but conditions and quality varied. In many of the schemes, sanitation presented a problem. However, in Chennai, the sewage system worked well and this was one achievement all interview respondents praised. Solid waste management and security posed additional problems.

In the global context of increasing frequency and intensity of disasters due to climate change, adequate planning and implementation of reconstruction and resettlement programmes has become more important than ever. In this regard, the lessons gained in this paper should be of value and can provide guidance to post-disaster resettlement programmes in developing countries.

There is a need to understand resourcing issues when reconstructing the built environment in a post‐disaster situation. The purpose of this paper is to determine the resourcing difficulties that are likely to face the international practitioners in post‐disaster reconstruction by identifying and comparing the factors that affected resource availability following natural disasters in Indonesia and China respectively.

The research methodology included field‐based questionnaire surveys, semi‐structured interviews and observations. A comparative analysis was used to extract similarities and differences with regard to resourcing approaches in Indonesia and China.

Despite the different resourcing approaches adopted in Indonesia and China in their recovery from large‐scale disasters, there are common issues facing post‐disaster reconstruction stakeholders, including competence of the implementing agencies, capacity of transportation, governance and legislation, and market conditions. Specifically, community‐related housing features played a dominant role in donor‐driven resourcing practice in post‐Indian Ocean tsunami reconstruction in Indonesia, whereas factors related to project control and management primarily contributed to resourcing performance of Chinese reconstruction specialists following the Wenchuan earthquake.

To solve resourcing problems, countries need to create an enabling environment and build institutional capacity. The cross‐cultural comparative analysis encourages policy makers and practitioners to exchange experiences from recent recovery operations.

The paper illustrates the infrastructural and institutional weaknesses that hindered effective resource procurement during post‐disaster reconstruction in Indonesia and China. The research findings show common areas in need of improvement in other disaster prone countries, along with the issues to be addressed in the donor‐led or contractor‐led resourcing practice in the two studied countries.

There is a significant dearth of theoretical and practical knowledge with respect to the design and planning stages of post-conflict housing reconstruction projects. This research presents the development of a conceptual framework towards improving the design and planning processes of post-conflict housing reconstruction projects.

A systematic review of the literature on post-conflict housing reconstruction in developing countries, incorporating the themes of collaboration and stakeholder engagement, is presented. A synthesis of this literature is used to inform the development of a conceptual framework that seeks to address the limitations of current housing reconstruction models in post-conflict environments by establishing collaborative approaches at the initial stages of design, as well as the tasks required to achieve efficient results through the aid of relief organisations (NGOs).

While the review essentially identifies the fundamental issues and inadequacies of the current housing reconstruction models, the proposed framework aims to enable the implementation of better and efficient collaborative design and planning strategies and practices in post-conflict housing reconstruction.

The conceptual framework aims to promote more effective collaboration through the design of post-conflict housing reconstruction projects by strengthening communication and coordination between the key stakeholders. Furthermore, the research highlights several gaps in the extant literature, signposting new directions for future research in the area of stakeholder engagement during the design and planning post-conflict housing.

Despite the role of post conflict housing reconstruction in establishing the development of peace in conflict affected countries, there are many issues which hinder its success. While the inconsideration of housing needs in post conflict housing reconstruction has directly or indirectly given rise for most of the issues, the countries emerging from conflicts face many challenges in addressing such housing needs. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to explore the management of housing needs in post conflict housing reconstruction. This paper aims to focus on identifying the challenges in addressing housing needs within the context of post conflict housing reconstruction in Sri Lanka.

The study used the grounded theory approach to collect and analyse the data collected through 37 in-depth interviews, conducted with policy makers, practitioners, academics and housing beneficiaries in Sri Lanka. Primary data were verified through a documents review.

The paper reveals that addressing housing needs in post conflict housing reconstruction in Sri Lanka is challenging, due to several factors. These include the socio economic profile of conflict affected people, conflict sensitive issues, donor requirements, limited availability of finance, weakened government administration, extent of housing and infrastructure damage, attitudes of affected people, land-related issues and shortage of labour and material.

A number of studies have identified the challenges of post conflict reconstruction. This study particularly identifies the challenges of addressing housing needs in post conflict housing reconstruction. These findings are useful for policy makers to develop strategies in addressing housing needs in post conflict housing reconstruction.