Informally-Constructed houses in Puerto Rico under Earthquake load

There is an urgent need to improve community capacity to recover more effectively after disasters through safer design and construction practices. To do this, training programs need to foster an improved understanding of shelter design and construction to withstand future wind and earthquake events. This project analyzed perceptions of those working in the informal construction sector of housing safety in Puerto Rico (after 2017's Hurricane Maria and the 2019-2020 earthquake swarm) and homeowner’s perceptions of housing safety in Philippines (after 2013's Typhoon Haiyan and 2017's Ormoc earthquake) to: (1) assess local understanding of shelter safety in multiple hazards, including causal factors influencing this understanding, through a household survey in the Philippines and a survey to of builders in Puerto Rico (Venable et al. 2020; Goldwyn et al. 2021; Goldwyn et al. 2022); (2) assess the expected performance of various post-disaster shelter typologies to quantify safety during future earthquake and wind events using performance-based engineering methods (see citations associated with the data sets); (3) identify conflicts between perceived and assessed safety of shelter, and why these conflicts exist, by comparing engineering assessments with local perceptions (Venable et al. 2021 and Goldwyn et al. 2022); and (4) create and assess a communication design for organizations assisting with training for safer housing construction (Goldwyn et al. 2023).