Improving efficiency for post-disaster transitional housing in Indonesia: An exploratory case study

Purpose - Natural hazards occur frequently in Indonesia. When post-disaster recovery is prolonged and complicated, it is necessary to provide accommodations for homeless refugees in disaster areas. Since a transitional housing solution includes planning, design and execution phases, the design phase implements the decisions made in the planning phase and also affects the results of the execution phase. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to assist communities to effectively deal with various processes during the design phase involving transitional housing solutions. Design/methodology/approach - Based on eight factors associated with "building back better" and ten principles of transitional housing, the paper identified three problems in the design phase: inappropriate selection of settlement sites, improper representation of housing facilities and ineffective scheduling of construction projects. To resolve these problems, this study integrated a geographic information system (GIS), three-dimensional (3D) building models and construction project management tools to assess settlement sites, confirm housing facilities and configure construction projects, respectively. Findings - After this study tested conventional methods (e.g. paper-based maps, drawings, reports) and the proposed approach, the results revealed that communities can appropriately determine settlement sites based on the GIS. The 3D building models enabled the communities to understand the external and internal layouts of housing facilities. Through construction project management, the communities could consider construction activities immediately when preparing the execution phase for transitional housing solutions. Originality/value - This study offers a useful reference for similar applications in post-disaster reconstruction and management.