Post-disaster housing reconstruction as a significant opportunity to building disaster resilience: a case in Vietnam

Housing and climate disasters have a close relation in Vietnam. Cyclones have been seen as the most common and dangerous hazards associated with critical damage and losses of local housing and livelihoods. Besides destructive strengths of cyclones, fragile physical and socio-economic conditions also contribute to increased housing vulnerability to storms. In addition, post-disaster housing reconstruction (PDHR) is still commonly seen as a single recovery action separated from the process of building resilient shelter and settlements in this country. This paper, therefore, examines the issues of disaster resilient housing in the light of PDHR to identify key factors required for a resilient housing system. A case study is applied to investigate these factors with the focus on the NGO Development Workshop France’s donor-built housing and the people’s self-built housing in Loc Tri Commune as the selected case. The results show that housing reconstruction can improve pre-disaster fragilities and needs to be viewed as one of key stages of the housing development process. Findings also suggested that, to build resilient housing, physical unsafe conditions should be focused at the same time of enhancing socio-economic and institutional aspects such as supporting local economy development, applying building permits for safe construction or improving governance mechanisms that low-income vulnerable families can access local professional services (i.e. local architects and engineers) for more regular consultations towards a safe and resilient construction.