Built Environment Professions in Disaster
The Built Environment Professions in Disaster Risk Reduction and Response – A guide for humanitarian agencies is intended to demonstrate the value of using built environment professionals more widely in disaster risk reduction and response and giving early attention to engaging the right expertise to address the problems of building, infrastructure and land. It shows how relevant professional skills and expertise can be applied at all stages of disaster management. It highlights that their contribution is especially important to achieving the longer-term goal of sustainable recovery and development.
The guide is targeted, in particular, at non-technical decision makers in humanitarian agencies.
However, it is also relevant to all international development agencies; to governments, at national, sub national and local levels and the affected people who, together, contribute the vast majority of funds and resources; and to non-governmental organisations involved in one or other aspect of disaster management.
The need for this document was identified through the ongoing work of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) President’s Major Disaster Management Commission (MDMC), which was formed shortly after the Indian Ocean tsunami disaster of December 2004. Around the same time in London, the Tsunami Recovery Network was formed as an international grouping of organisations and individuals adhering to a set of basic principles addressing the sustainable development issues associated with major disasters, in particular how they affect vulnerable low-income communities in developing countries. Following subsequent disasters, including Hurricane Katrina and the earthquake in Pakistan, the Tsunami Recovery Network was reconstituted in August 2006 as the Development from Disasters Network (DFDN).
RICS President’s MDMC, together with the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), the Royal Town Planning Institute (RTPI) International Development Network and the Royal Institute of British
Architects (RIBA), as Network members representing the built environment professions on its Steering Group, met separately on a regular basis to explore ways in which they could support and promote the work of the Network and long-term recovery from disasters
