Impacts of prefabricated temporary housing after disasters: 1999 earthquakes in Turkey

Temporary housing is a crucial but controversial part of disaster recovery; disaster-affected families who have lost their homes need a private and secure place to restart their daily activities as soon as possible after the disaster, yet temporary housing programmes tend to be overly expensive, too late and responsible for undesirable impacts on the urban environment. The purpose of this research is to recognize exactly what problems exist with temporary housing in the long term (that is after 5 years) and to identify, using the systems approach, the origin of these problems within the project process for temporary housing. Using the Logical Framework Approach to highlight the projects’ outcomes, the investigation focuses on the case study of the temporary housing programme for the 1999 earthquakes in Turkey and on four temporary housing projects in Düzce, one disaster-affected town. It is found that unwanted effects can be reduced through proper facilities management, reuse of the units, and by the initial application of unit designs that are easy to dismantle. Incorporating plans upfront, thus dealing with these problems by anticipation, can minimize negative impacts.