2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Housing is of utmost importance for living, protection, and overall well-being. Natural disasters afflict all countries and communities, but especially low-income communities, families, and individuals. Additionally, these communities often receive delayed disaster recovery, which translates into informal post-disaster reconstruction. This exacerbates the housing crisis resulting from a natural disaster, as most informal construction is built by residents themselves, lacking structural knowledge, professional advice, quality control, and proper construction and trade techniques. The goals of this research are to identify the challenges and vulnerabilities of low-income communities, as well as gaps in construction trade knowledge and resources among them. Additionally, this research aims to investigate effective pedagogy to provide low-income individuals with appropriate education, training, techniques, and expertise to aid in resilient post-disaster reconstruction. To achieve these goals, this research conducted a survey to architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) experts from Puerto Rico to identify: (a) the major challenges and vulnerabilities of low-income communities post-disaster, as well as the main issues of informal construction; (b) potential gaps in trade and construction knowledge, as well as the lack of resources of low-income individuals and the underrepresented workforce; and (c) pedagogy, including course delivery and instructional technologies, to effectively educate and train low-income individuals in trade and basic construction knowledge. The results of this study showed the urgency of educating and training low-income individuals highly susceptible to natural disasters in trades, construction techniques, and technologies that can be safely and effectively used to aid in post-disaster reconstruction while utilizing available resources. This will have a paramount impact on communities since informal construction not only exposes individuals to damages and loss of housing but, more importantly, puts their lives in great danger.