Design for Disaster Displacement

Abstract

Due to the increase in occurrence of natural disasters, it is imperative for our society to learn to maintain resiliency, while also preparing for the aftermath of a disaster. The major tasks of this proposal include providing emergency and permanent housing, within a condensed timeframe to a medium density while providing communal spaces and activities for long term use. New York City, the epicenter of the region and the country, can be catastrophically damaged by an earthquake or hurricane, particularly because of the density of population and lack of awareness of seismic risk. The quality of pre-disaster planning immediately results in a more successful post-disaster reconstruction, which directly impacts the future resiliency of the community. In order to decrease the timeframe between the disaster, emergency response, the relief phase, and the recovery of the community, a new building assembly system must be developed to solve this problem.