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This paper presents a pop-up technique based on origamic architecture as a technological design solution for post-disaster temporary shelter systems. First of all, the concepts of disaster and post-disaster are briefly introduced, and the roles and needs of post-disaster temporary shelter systems, particularly in emergency periods, are reviewed. Second, pop-up techniques based on origamic architecture are briefly discussed. Third, a formal language for opening the cards of origamic architecture is introduced, out of which a geometric elasticity has been developed. With the language, a variety of flexible and expandable designs for shelter structures can be generated by incorporating different pop-up techniques. Finally, a prototype shelter has been constructed to demonstrate the adaptability and sustainability of the shelter within the local environment and the affected society, considering portability, low-cost, and easy in assembling by any unskilled person.

As a flood-prone region in Iran, Golestan province has encountered various disasters in its history. The last one occurred in March 2019, affected Aq-Qala County and caused irreparable physical, economic, social and environmental problems. The purpose of this study is to investigate the process of providing shelter in emergency, rehabilitation and reconstruction phases after the floods in the villages of Aq-Qala.

A research method is a hybrid approach. The collection of data involved a combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches in addition to reviewing the documented texts in resources to collect the required data using observations, field survey activities, questionnaires and in-depth interviews. From April 2019 to December 2019, nine separate visits have occurred to collect the needed information.

This paper shows dissatisfaction with providing shelter and attempts to identify the factors which caused the challenges. The findings revealed issues such as hygienic problems in collective camps, lack of thermal resistance in temporary accommodations and rising material prices. These findings lead to a contributive list of suggestions avoiding the recurrence of the harms in the future.

This study proposes solutions and approaches to improve the post-flood settlement process for possible floods in the future such as equipped camps, proper temporary housing, monitoring the reconstruction and the price of the materials. If these approaches are used by authorities and people in similar rural areas, the long-term effects of inadequate post-flood shelter can be reduced.

This paper aims to highlight the localised shelter solutions to fulfil adequate and disaster resilient housing needs of urban informal settlers of Honiara, the capital city of Solomon Islands, in a way that is sensitive to their unique challenges, values and aspirations, is gender- and disability-inclusive, and considers housing from the complete lifecycle of a disaster (pre-, during- and post-).

Qualitative data was gathered through empirical research through five community workshops at five hotspot settlements, two stakeholder workshops and a stakeholder interview. Semi-structured questions as well as photographs of housing and settlement were used for data collection. With an emphasis on self-recovery, the identified shelter needs were then matched with the roles and responsibilities of the Government to support a process of “assisted” self-preparedness and recovery.

The output of the research was the Solomon Islands Shelter Guide. This paper draws from the Guide to present some of the findings. One of the key findings was an emphasis on shelter self-preparedness and self-recovery. However, in order for them to do that, they needed a combination of assistance – technical knowledge, materials and financial support – which is tailored to their settlement’s specific needs and based on hazard damage assessment. While the Guide provides one form of the assistance (i.e. technical), this paper is a call for action from the Solomon Islands Government and shelter responders to fulfil the rest of the community needs for shelter adequacy.

The paper contributes to existing scholarship on shelter after disasters by adding “assisted” in front of self-recovery, in line with the limited access to resources by the most vulnerable to recover, despite housing being” a human right and definition of adequate housing (UN-Habitat, 2015, 2021), which includes freedom of choice, entitlements and meeting minimum adequacy criteria.

There are many implications of this research. Since the publication of the Shelter Guide, there is excitement among most humanitarian and development agencies, government authorities and the local communities in Honiara. The Guide forms the first step in contributing to identified needs and strengthening community capacities to self-build, self-recover or self-retrofit one’s house based on their own choice of materials, design, social and economic circumstance. However, it provides one of the three elements identified as needs by the communities, as i) technical guidance, and a kit-of parts for multi-hazard safe housing, ii) financial and economic assistance and iii) a political voice or being supported and heard by the government. The research team are working with the same five urban informal communities in 2022–2023 to develop and operationalise local disaster plans (in partnership with local non-government organisations), capacity-building activities and translation of the Shelter Guide into technical posters (for local builders) and graphic novel in local pidgin language, as part of the Climate Resilient Honiara project (funded by the United Nations framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC) Adaptation fund and administered by UN-Habitat). In the longer term it would be worth evaluating the practical implications of the Guide or to examine whether the proposed socio-technical and governance guidance will find roots in the local culture.

While the Guide adhered to internationally agreed concepts of self-recovery, incremental shelter and core space, it contributes to existing scholarship on shelter after disasters by adding “assisted” in front of self-recovery, in line with housing as a human right and adequate housing (UN-Habitat, 2015, 2021), including freedom of choice, entitlements and meet minimum adequacy criteria, all of which require materials and financial assistance by the relevant in-country authorities.

The terms “sheltering” and “housing” are used in a variety of unclear and inconsistent ways in the disaster literature. Proposes a differentiation among emergency sheltering, temporary sheltering, temporary housing and permanent housing. Indicates how they are paid differential attention in American disaster planning and gives specific observations about the four patterns, noting especially how they differ from one another. Suggests there will be a future increase in problems in all the patterns, and that it is not yet fully established to what extent these patterns are applicable in all types of societies.

Self-recovery in post-disaster shelter is not the exception but the norm. Following earthquake, flood or storm, the majority of affected families will inevitably rebuild their homes themselves, using their own resources, but there is little support from the international community to encourage good safe building practice. While the communication of key messages about safer building has been carried out effectively in development contexts, it rarely forms a major part of humanitarian response programming. If the humanitarian shelter sector is committed to the principles of Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR), more can be done to support the process of safer reconstruction among self-rebuilders. This paper argues the case for the humanitarian community to link post-disaster shelter programming with the more developmental approach of communicating building safety to a much wider audience than just the most vulnerable beneficiaries. It proposes the shelter sector and the donor community direct more resources towards support for this process, which would augment the effectiveness and impact of a shelter response.

This paper investigates the role of the architect in post-disaster reconstruction and questions their ability to facilitate permanent building solutions. There is an ever-increasing population of refugees and internally displaced persons due to disasters and conflicts who have a basic need for shelter. To date, housing solutions for such people has tended to focus on short-term, temporary shelter solutions that have been largely unsuccessful. This increasing demand for shelter has led to an emerging group of architects skilled in post-disaster reconstruction. These architects acknowledge that shelter is critical to survival, but believe architects should focus on rebuilding in a manner that is quick, durable but permanent. They believe that an architect skilled in post-disaster reconstruction can produce solutions that meet the requirement of the emergency phase, through to semi-permanent and even permanent homes, without wasting time and money on interim shelters. Case Study Research was used to examine and evaluate the assistance provided by Emergency Architects Australia (EAA) to the Kei Gold community in the Solomon Islands after the 2007 earthquake and tsunami. The results indicate that an architect’s response to a disaster must go beyond providing temporary shelter; they must create permanent building solutions that respond to the site and the culture while servicing the needs of the community. The vernacular reconstruction methods implemented by EAA in Kei Gold Village have been successful in developing permanent housing solutions. Further research and development is required to gain a broader understanding of the role of the architect in disasters of varying scales and typologies.

The most important need after natural disasters is the sheltering. However, most of the existing temporary shelters do not meet all requirements for long-term use and not provide adequate flexibility within the space. This paper aims to develop a transitional postdisaster shelter transforming from a closed shape to an expanded form in response to changing functional and spatial needs of disaster victims. The study also proposes alternative unit combinations for various functions, and settlement layouts to create a comfortable living environment for occupants.

The research methodology is based on theoretical and design frameworks which requires inductive and deductive approaches. Forming the background of the study, the theoretical framework consists of four parts which are literature review on temporary shelters presenting state-of-the-art; determination of design guidelines and strategies based on shelter standards; identification of technical requirements; and analysis of existing temporary shelters. Having three parts, the design framework includes design of transformable transitional shelter based on three-dimensional modeling, creation of different unit combinations to be used for various purposes and development of settlement layouts as case studies.

The analysis conducted in this study demonstrates that most of the existing temporary shelters have limited geometric configurations and major problems in terms of their performance, transportation and storage. On the other hand, the transformable shelter proposed by the authors can provide form and spatial flexibilities thanks to its expansion properties, occupy less space for transportation, easily be transported to any desired location in its compact state and be customized according to user needs. Several units can be combined either to serve larger families or to be used for different functions.

This paper contributes to the literature as presenting not only a theoretical framework on temporary shelters but also a design framework on transformable shelter design for the ones who are willing to develop similar transformable shelters based on the determined guidelines, strategies and requirements.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the performance of post-disaster housing reconstruction projects, propose the conceptual living-transforming disaster relief shelter (LTFDR-shelter) approach where temporary shelter is incrementally transformed into a more permanent dwelling by using living technologies and investigate its applicability to provide sustainable post-disaster housing following natural-hazard-induced disasters.

A questionnaire survey with 120 household recipients of three Sri Lankan post-disaster housing projects was employed to explore how the post-disaster housing projects have performed against the occupants' expectations. Furthermore, the new proposed LTFDR-shelter conceptual approach's applicability to address the existing issues found in the study was investigated.

The paper evaluates and identifies the physical and technical, and socio-economic performance issues of post-disaster housing and discusses the applicability of the proposed LTFDR-shelter conceptual approach as an efficient tool to adequately improve the identified factors integrating three phases of relief, rehabilitation and reconstruction employing living technology.

Although the study's scope was limited to the occupant view of the performance of post-disaster housing in Sri Lanka, the findings and conceptual LTFDR-shelter approach could be of particular relevance to other developing countries affected by similar disasters. Further research is recommended to investigate and develop this concept in depth.

This study lays the conceptual foundation for a new theoretical approach in post-disaster housing, which encourages more interdisciplinary collaborations and empirical investigations that potentially enhance post-disaster housing performance and facilitates the application of living technology in the built environment.

This paper explores Arctic post-disaster situations by focusing on settlement and shelter in Arctic humanitarian contexts.

Principles of post-disaster settlement and shelter are examined for the Arctic and then for the case study of Svalbard, Norway.

Established principles apply in the Arctic, but are not easy to implement. Limited practical experience exists, and some Arctic humanitarian situations require much more investigation to understand how to deal with the post-disaster settlement and shelter process.

Setting an agenda for aspects of the principles and practices of Arctic humanitarianism.

The inevitable occurrence of natural disasters and crisis arising from them causes a lot of losses globally, particularly in disaster-prone countries such as Iran. One of the main issues considered by organizations involved in crisis management is the selection of suitable sites for temporary sheltering for disaster victims. This study aims to choose safe places to establish temporary sheltering in urban environment.

Initially, relevant factors are identified by reviewing literature and through consultation with disaster experts. Next, the important layers were collected and analytical hierarchy process was used to assess the criteria weights based on their effectiveness on selection of safe sites for temporary sheltering. Finally, for integrating layers of factors, overlay and fuzzy models were used in Geographic Information System (GIS) environment, and subsequently, a proper map was prepared and suitable areas were identified.

7 main criteria and 19 sub-criteria were selected to provide safe places for temporary sheltering. The results of fuzzy model in this study provide more accurate and limited safe areas for temporary sheltering when compared to index overlay model.

The results of this study will help decision-makers and local and regional managers to reduce the vulnerability of at-risk communities in urban environments. Moreover, choosing appropriate places for temporary shelters would help build community disaster resilience according to these criteria.