martAccelerating Post-Disaster Response: The Haiti (2021) Experience
July 2024
In the aftermath of a destructive event, such as a large earthquake, several immediate actions need to be put in place to reduce the impacts on the affected population. In spite of the best engineering efforts, large earthquakes still cause a great deal of material and human losses, more so when they occur in vulnerable areas or when they get superimposed by the effects of other natural or human-induced disasters. Immediately following the search and rescue, including associated medical support, and restarting the supply chain for primary necessities, it is of paramount importance to assess the state of the building stock in order to facilitate the development of a mid to long-term shelter approach. Identifying shelter needs and selecting suited shelter approach(es) can have a significant impact on the pace and quality of recovery. Relocation is often seen as a solution. However, it can cripple communities and social structures, particularly when applied out-of-context, by severely impacting the quality of life since it disrupts consolidated human relations and can delay and extend reconstruction times. The assessment of large building stock to identify buildings still in use poses several challenges; among them is the time needed as well as the record- suitable for keeping related to an orderly scan of the damage in the population of buildings affected by the event (earthquake). In this regard, digital tools can play an important role and are increasingly used by humanitarian operators in disaster responses to increase efficiency, reduce lag times for data availability, and increase consistency. This paper first introduces the approach that was implemented after the 2021 M7.2 Haiti seismic event to accelerate the assessment of the building stock and disaster response, then it compares it to current practice in Italy. The approach adopted for Haiti allowed to reach more than 600,000 beneficiaries during the relatively short time period of 5 months, and allowed to create a database of the state and damages of the scrutinized buildings that permitted real-time reviews and analyses by remote experts, further enhancing the quality of the assessments and, in the end, the safety of the survivors.
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