Housing & Hazards
Why change traditional house building practice?
Vulnerability to natural hazards can change for a number of reasons. Pressure of population and the need to put more good land to agriculture means that increasing numbers of people must live on riverbanks or in coastal areas where they are more exposed to the vagaries of nature.
Another consequence of putting good land to agriculture is that it is often replacing natural construction materials such as bamboo, driving up the price of these resources. A generation ago, people used to be able to freely meet their needs locally in the forests.
The Housing & Hazards response
Housing & Hazards set out to explore simple technologies that could give Bangladesh's non-engineered buildings a measure of resilience against floods and wind. The technologies had to be affordable, appropriate and available in local markets to give millions of people real choices and some control over their lives and livelihoods.
Making cement stabilised mud bricks
Technologies and communication
We found that simple strengthening improvements to rural houses could add as little as 5% of the total
construction cost. However, many rural homes are self-
Mud concrete blocks provide outstanding resistance to flood erosion. This technology is being introduced as a cost effective alternative to fired bricks or concrete. Even when these technologies can be communicated to the local people, they are not necessarily embraced for a variety of reasons:
The Housing and Hazards group is addressing these issues by investigating means of improving communication at the grass roots level and working with local groups to develop affordable technologies that can be implemented by the local people.
Issues