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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.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the resourcing issues that concern the provision of resources required for reconstruction projects after a disaster and to enable them to be integrated into a holistic planning process.

Triangulation methodology is adopted in this paper including both quantitative and qualitative methods. The quantitative approach, namely statistic analysis with the aid of questionnaires and SPSS is employed to identify the key factors affecting resource availability in post‐disaster reconstruction situations. The qualitative semi‐structured interviews and desk reviews of government and media documents are conducted to further interpret outcomes in the questionnaire session.

Based on empirical research, the major finding of the paper is that in order to arrive at a resilient and sustainable built environment after a disaster, resourcing efforts should be made around four components – resourcing facilitator: legislation and policy; resourcing implementer: construction industry; resourcing platform: construction market; and resourcing access: transportation system.

The original part of this paper is in raising the importance of resourcing for achieving a resilient post‐disaster built environment, and in presenting a thorough overhaul of the resourcing components. The paper also offers a vision of comprehensive planning and preparedness to facilitate resourcing operations in post‐disaster reconstruction; pinpoints possible constraints inherent in post‐disaster resourcing environment; and provides a direction‐setting framework to achieve the vision with built environment resilience considerations incorporated.

With many natural disasters such as earthquakes, cyclones, bushfires and tsunamis destroying human habitats around the world, post-disaster housing reconstruction has become a critical topic. The current practice of post-disaster reconstruction consists of various approaches that carry affected homeowners from temporary shelters to permanent housing. While temporary shelters may be provided within a matter of days as immediate disaster relief, permanent housing can take years to complete. However, time is critical, as affected communities will need to restore their livelihoods as soon as possible. Prefabricated modular construction has the potential to drastically improve the time taken to provide permanent housing. Due to this time-efficiency, which is an inherent characteristic of modular construction, it can be a desirable strategy for post-disaster housing reconstruction. This paper discusses how prefabricated modular structures can provide a more time-efficient solution by analysing several present-day examples taken from published post-disaster housing reconstruction processes that have been carried out in different parts of the world. It also evaluates how other features of modular construction, such as ease of decommissioning and reusability, can add value to post-disaster reconstruction processes and organisations that contribute to the planning, design and construction stages of the reconstruction process. The suitability of modular construction will also be discussed in the context of the guidelines and best practice guides for post-disaster housing reconstruction published by international organisations. Through this analysis and discussion, it is concluded that prefabricated modular structures are a highly desirable time-efficient solution to post-disaster housing reconstruction.

This study aims to reframe the common concept of post-disaster reconstruction “building back better”, especially in the context of post-disaster housing design.

An Aceh post-tsunami housing reconstruction project is used as a case study with qualitative methodology through in-depth interviews of selected respondents.

The study findings have shown that the term “building back better” is not a familiar term for housing recipients. Whichever different personal background post-disaster survivors come from, whether they are housewife, civil servant, fisherman, university student, businessman or a professional, none have ever heard this phrase. All found it hard to understand the term. This study argues that the “building back better” concept is good in policy but not working in practice. As a result, housing recipients not only were dissatisfied with their new houses but also found that the new housing configurations profoundly altered their traditional way of life. In light of these findings, the paper argues that the concept of “building back better” needs to be reframed to take account of the cultural individual and communal needs and wants of post-disaster survivors.

This study discusses only one aspect of post-disaster reconstruction that is the design of housing reconstruction.

Results from this study provide a practical contribution for reconstruction actors especially designers, architects and planners. It helps them to reconsider the common concepts they have used for post-disaster reconstruction processes particularly in designing housing reconstruction projects.

This study focuses on the question of how tsunami survivors in Aceh reacted to the design of their new post-tsunami houses and what they had done themselves to make their homes a better and nicer place to live within their own cultural needs. This study also sought to understand what motivated the opinions the respondents had about the design of housing reconstruction after the tsunami in Aceh generally. In addition, the study investigated whether survivors knew the phrase and the credo of “building back better” in a post-disaster context.

The intervention of many different organizations during the post-disaster housing reconstructions could also influence the sustainability of the overall socio-ecology of the affected areas. Different approaches in design, selection of building materials and construction technologies deployed in pursuit of disaster resiliency may cause undesirable adverse circumstances to the surroundings, which escalate its susceptibility to future calamities. Therefore, this paper aims to identify relevant key indicators which interpret construction sustainability in a post-disaster housing reconstruction context, and to further investigate the dynamic interactions of these indicators on the socio-ecological system to achieve holistic sustainable post-disaster housing reconstructions.

Methodology was divided into three main stages. The first stage involved content analysis of related research materials, whereas the second stage was allocated for empirical data collection from case study and interview sessions. Data obtained from the first and second stage were then used to develop a causal loop diagram in the third stage to identify dynamic interrelationships between the indicators and the variables within a post-disaster reconstruction system.

From our results, the nexus of sustainability and disaster resilience is apparent and it is imperative to comprehend their dynamic interactions. The impacts of post-disaster reconstructions on the socio-ecological system are significant. Therefore, the adaptation of integrated sustainable construction approach in the housing reconstruction practice through system thinking will foster a holistic approach in the decision-making process and could reduce environmental damage. This also strengthens the interrelated socio-ecological systems, thus reinforcing disaster resilience in the built environment.

This research looks into the adaptation of integrated sustainable construction approach in the housing reconstruction practice through systems thinking approach. This will foster a holistic approach in the decision-making process and could reduce environmental damage. This also strengthens the interrelated socio-ecological systems, thus reinforcing disaster resilience in the built environment. This paper also looks into identifying relevant key indicators that interpret construction sustainability, which incorporate environmental, social and economic factors pertaining to the context of post-disaster housing reconstruction in Kuala Krai, Kelantan. The dynamic interrelationships and causal impacts between the indicators with other variables within the system were also established.

Despite the extensive research on post-disaster reconstruction projects (PDRP), there is a paucity of studies that examine critical challenges for the project practices in post-war-developing countries, particularly, Africa. The purpose of this research is to investigate the key project management challenges impacting the post-disaster reconstruction projects (PDRP) during the construction and planning stages in Angola, with an aim to fill the knowledge gap.

The primary data was collected from 130 project management practitioners working with planning, provincial government organisations including consultants, and contractors within the Angolan public sectors organisations. Response data was subjected to descriptive statistics, mean scores, and inferential statistics (One sample t-tests) and Kendall's concordance.

The descriptive and empirical analysis demonstrated a disparity of the ranking of the 21challenges affecting the PDRP among the groups; with statistically significant differences amongst the 10 challenges. Based on the overall sample, 6 out of 10 critical challenges are between (24–25) levels of agreement close to the mean. The results of the mean score ranking indicate that “working with poor or restricted access to location”, “project culture that fits the needs of local people”; “improving the capacity of local government”, “minimizing the negative effects of local people” and “relocation issues by establishing property rights during the reconstruction project” were the five critical challenges to managing PDRP whereas “improving information and communication processes”, “securing adequate resources (material and machinery)”, “dealing with rising costs of materials and labour” were considered to be the least critical.

The study was restricted to one province and Country (out of 18) namely, Luanda, Angola. Therefore, the findings may not be generalized to public sector organisations operating in different countries with different contexts, political settings and disaster complexities.

The establishment of challenges in PDRPs helps the key stakeholders by providing the foundation to project teams to address the challenges during planning and construction stages, and thus improving project delivery in the future. Understanding the uniqueness of PDRPs and interdependency of project management from the implementing organization is of particular value for the managers of future projects and other decision-makers, especially in the emerging countries. Moreover, the findings could be used to reflect on the need to formulate policies appropriate to post disaster environments, which among other issues could address building policies, which could include land ownership regulations and procedures together with property rights.

This study contributes to the body of knowledge on the subject within a previously unexplored post-war context with a focus on public organizations perspective. The study provides insights on the challenges affecting the post-disaster reconstruction across the Angolan public sector.

A disaster is a serious disruption for the operation of a society, causing extensive life and property losses. Since construction activities are highly knowledge‐intensive, knowledge management (KM) practices will encourage continuous improvement, distribute best practices, quick response to beneficiaries, share valuable tacit knowledge, reduce rework, improve competitiveness and innovations, and reduce complexities in post‐disaster housing reconstruction. Therefore, this research aims to study and explore the degree to which KM is involved in post‐disaster housing reconstruction and the effect that KM has on post‐disaster housing reconstruction in the Sri Lankan context.

The study was conducted by systematically reviewing the literature in Knowledge and KM to highlight the basic principles. Data collection mode for the study was close‐end questionnaires and semi‐structured interviews. Data were collected from donor and consultancy organisations which are involved in post‐disaster housing reconstruction in Sri Lanka.

The results show that most of the donors and consultancy organisations carry out permanent disaster housing reconstruction for tsunami devastation. Further, the study reveals that organisations use competences and repositories as the main sources of knowledge internal and external to the organisation. Project reviews, task teams, face‐to‐face interactions, and electronic mail systems were greatly used to support KM. Even though the performance of the work was improved through KM, lack of compiling and synthesizing the accumulated data, information and knowledge, storing and organizing would be the main challenge faced by these organisations.

It is evident that a more concerted and formal approach will improve disaster housing reconstruction. Since knowledge gatekeepers have extensive tacit and explicit knowledge, the organisations have to use it as a significant source. Even though the majority of the donors and consulting organisations used competencies and repositories as main sources of K, the identification and exploitation of a variety of appropriate sources are of central importance. Further, organisations have to focus more on a variety of IT tools in order to store Knowledge for future use. Since there were challenges for KM, the organisations have to identify proper solutions in order to move towards and achieve the benefits of KM. Finally, the organisations have to provide an appropriate rewards system to encourage their employees in participating in KM.

The disaster housing reconstruction will not end on a certain point and it will be a continuous process. Formal KM systems will help to improve the present state and further provide proper Knowledge in the future. There should be a standardised practice in order to improve the performance and give good value for beneficiaries. The study makes it quite evident that proper KM will improve the status of post‐disaster housing reconstruction.

The purpose of this paper is to explore and prioritize the key client values within contracting services for reconstructing the built environment in post-disaster situations.

A literature review, semi-structured interviews and questionnaire survey were included in this study. A comparative analysis was used to obtain different perspectives between public and private sectors.

A total of 39 client values were identified in this study. Clients for disaster reconstruction services put more emphasis on values such as timeliness, availability of resources, competency, building a trust-based relationship, financial stability, and communication techniques than contract price. Public and private clients have a different perspective regarding the importance of the identified values, while these are not statistically significant for the most important values.

The construction literature is focussed on business-as-usual rather than post-disaster reconstruction. To ensure that reconstruction programmes after a disaster are successfully implemented, it is necessary to identify and prioritize the client values within contracting services. Focussing the attention of the service providers on these values is believed to have the greatest impact on the programmes’ success.

Understanding the client values identified by this study can aid contractors to better prepare for reconstruction programmes and provide improved services to clients.

A number of important client values within contracting services that appear to have a bearing on the success of disaster reconstruction programmes were identified in this study.

The study aims to explore improvements to environmental management legislation that will enable the implementation of post-disaster reconstruction activities after the built environment has been affected by a natural disaster.

The study programme collates opinions from building and development control officers and other disaster practitioners based in New Zealand. The objective was to determine the practical implication of implementing reconstruction arrangements under the Resource Management Act (RMA). The survey was administered online, and a data set of 80 responses was used for the analyses.

The survey results show that the current reconstruction framework in New Zealand may cause procedural constraints and become burdensome to property owners who desire early recovery from a disaster event. Therefore, improvements are suggested to certain aspects of the RMA reconstruction provisions, so that it facilitates early recovery from natural disasters.

The paper is one aspect of a doctoral study that reviewed the implications of implementing reconstruction under existing legislative framework. It highlights the need for improvements to environmental management legislation to enable effective reconstruction after natural disasters in New Zealand. These have wider implications to other countries to revise their legislation before any disaster, thus reducing the problems that may be experienced while implementing environmental and developmental legislation.

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.