DISASTER MANAGEMENT IN CONTEXT

OF VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE
Submitted To:-
DISASTER and VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE

 Disasters like earthquakes and flood cause enormous loss of lives and property all
over the India frequently.
 Last year (2018) disaster stroked South India and this year(2019) Uttar Pradesh
(U.P.).
 An accepted understanding of vernacular architecture is that it embraces those
buildings that are not designed by specialists, lacking any architectural or
engineering project.
 On the contrary, they are part of a process that involves many people over many
generations, relying on their empirical knowledge and reflecting the tradition and
life style of a community, as well as their bonding with the natural environment.
 However, precisely because of its empirical and traditional nature, people
nowadays tend to see vernacular architecture as an obsolete and unsafe way of
building, only valued as a key-element for a region’s cultural identity.
BUT IT’S A MYTH AND IS OBSERVED THAT VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE tend to be
built to minimize damage and withstand such calamities to a reliable extent.
DISASTER and VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE

 Resilience becomes a strategic essential for the human communities (urban and rural) as
global change, climate, social and cultural change, natural and industrial disasters and
economic shocks affect local communities. In this context vernacular architecture heritage,
tangible and more intangible, constitutes an important field as it demonstrates a great
capacity to evolve and adapt itself to the changing external conditions, as it is a result of
several cycles of global changes.
 Urban resilience is the capacity of the cities to absorb shocks and perturbations without
undergoing major alterations in its functional organization and economic, social and
physical practices. Resilient cities are not only surviving potential risks and threats but also
rather catching the positive consequences that the transformations might lead to.
 Resilience, for these reasons, is indispensable in order to lessen the negative influences of
the aforementioned changes and increase the safety of the cities.
 Resilient settlements require a dynamic architecture by considering all the surrounding
conditions in a constant process of transformation; so adaptability becomes an important
principle of RESILIENT VERNACULAR ARCHITECTURE.
 In this case, vernacular design strategies can be approved as “resilient” as their formation is
influenced by dynamic factors such as “locally available materials”, “macroclimate” and
“living cultures”.
LOCALLY AVAILABLE, RENEWABLE RESOURCES ARE MORE
RESILIENT:

 Dependence on abundant local resources such as

groundwater and local building materials provides more
resilience than the dependence on nonrenewable
resources or the resources that require great effort of
access.
DIVERGENT AND INESSENTIAL SYSTEMS ARE
INHERENTLY MORE RESILIENT:

 More diverse
communities have a
higher capacity to
respond to after-shocks
and become more
capable to adapt itself to
the changing
environments and needs
of its habitants.
Resilience anticipates interruptions and a
constantly changing future:

 The natural environment where

we build our cities must be
considered as a dynamic
formation as it undergoes
constant changes such as climatic
changes with rising temperatures,
increasing sea levels, natural
disasters, floods and socio-
cultural transformations. Resilient
cities require an ability to
predict the natural upheavals
and interruptions and respond to
the continuous changes with
dynamic architecture.
EXAMPLES
1. Disaster resilient vernacular housing technology in
Nepal
 The vernacular construction technology in Terai is found to be technologically
resilient in terms of floods and earthquakes, and earthquake resistant
technologies are identified in the dwellings of the western mid-hill of Nepal. The
traditional Rajbanshi houses in eastern Nepal are found to be resilient in terms
of earthquake and flood disasters and the Gurung and Magar houses in western
mid hills are found to be resilient in terms of earthquake disaster.
 The vernacular construction technology in Terai is found to be technologically
resilient in terms of floods and earthquakes, and earthquake resistant
technologies are identified in the dwellings of the western mid-hill of Nepal. The
traditional Rajbanshi houses in eastern Nepal are found to be resilient in terms
of earthquake and flood disasters and the Gurung and Magar houses in western
mid hills are found to be resilient in terms of earthquake disaster.
 The earthquake resistant vernacular
architecture in the Himalayas
 The Kashmir earthquake was one of the most destructive earthquakes in
world history. The death toll from this magnitude 7.6 earthquake was
approximately 80,000 and over 3 million were left homeless. In a region
known to be so vulnerable to earthquakes, it is reasonable to ask: Why
did both the masonry and reinforced concrete buildings in the area prove
so vulnerable to collapse? Why did over 80,000 people lose their lives in
what is a largely rural mountainous region? Why did 6,200 schools
collapse onto the children at the time of morning roll call in Pakistan alone?
(Fig. 10) This kind of scenario has played out repeatedly over recent
decades in other earthquakes around the world, in cities and rural areas
alike, as it has again in Nepal. 87 Ironically, even as the knowledge of
earthquake engineering has grown and become more sophisticated,
earthquakes have an increasing toll in places where steel and reinforced
concrete construction have displaced traditional construction.
 From this it is evident that vernacular architecture is more able to withstand
vulnerable disasters.
THANK YOU