Design and Disaster Resilience: Toward a Role for Design in Disaster Mitigation and Recovery

This paper examines how the discourses and practices of design can be applied to both mitigate the damaging impacts of (un-)natural disasters and guide resilient post-disaster recovery. Integrated with systems analysis, design can provide both an innovative window for understanding the complexities of disaster-risk reduction and recovery, as well as a conceptual bridge to new ways of building socio-economic and physical resilience in disaster-affected communities. However, the skills of key systems and design thinkers, such as architects, urban planners, and landscape architects, are seldom employed, despite their demonstrated capacity to work with disaster-prone or -impacted communities to develop integrated spatial responses to guide both disaster-risk reduction and long-term rebuilding after a disaster. Indeed, there has been little focused investigation of the potential contributions of design per se in developing strategies for disaster-risk reduction and recovery. Similarly, there has been little attention in design education to complementing the creative problem-solving skills of the designer with the contextual and systemic understandings of disaster management and disaster-resilient design. This paper addresses these omissions in both disaster management and design education though a review of research on design contributions to disaster issues and provides a case study of the curriculum and pedagogical approaches appropriate to build capacity for enhancing this contribution.