Abstract
Damages to the housing sector is among the most intense and harmful consequences of natural hazards, triggering significant socioeconomic deterioration in the human development agenda. Making the housing sector disaster-resilient has substantial importance in many aspects. Unfortunately, despite continuous efforts to develop a resilient housing sector and a built environment where it belongs, losses are being replicated with increased intensity and frequency. The technical know-how of resilient construction methodologies has already been discussed in broader terms. However, motivating people to invest in resilient technologies remains challenging.Investing in resilience requires extensive funding, which is one of the critical causes for current underinvestment in resilience. This necessitates incentivising and rewarding risk-informed local and national investments in resilient practices. Incentives are rewards for actions that exceed the minimum level of compliance and act as inducements for improved performance. Amidst the different incentives, financial incentives become significant, reducing funding constraints towards resilient investments. Several efforts have already been taken to provide such inducements via financial incentives in different contexts. However, the effectiveness of such mechanisms is subject to questions, and how to strategically use these financial incentives to promote disaster resilience remains problematic.
The study investigates the use of financial incentives to enhance the investment on housing sector resilience. The fieldwork was based in Sri Lanka, which was among the top three countries in terms of weather-related loss events in 2017 and the second highest in the Climate Risk Index based on fatalities and economic losses due to extreme weather events. Accordingly, three holistic case studies were conducted in three selected geographical districts with 15 Expert interviews and 37 community-level interviews representing the housing owners, disaster resilience experts, financial regulatory authorities, housing building authorities, and local government authorities.
The study finally developed a final incentive framework for promoting the distress resilience of the housing sector. Research findings have developed the concept of disaster-resilient housing by framing its key properties and resilience dimensions and linking it with thirteen resilience interventions. Furthermore, the study has established the key issues and challenges towards enhancing the disaster resilience of the housing sector. Findings suggest two main types of financial incentives, direct and indirect, to enhance the housing sector's disaster resilience. The direct financial incentives include Funding Assistance, Pricing Signals, Tax adjustments, Disincentives, and Money Market Interventions. The indirect types include Facilitation and Law Enforcement incentives. Using the above different incentive types, the study has devised strategies for using financial incentives to promote disaster-resilient housing. The developed financial incentive strategies cover the key areas of enhancing Institutional Intervention, Private Sector Participation, Community Engagement, Technological Advancement, Emergency Management / Disaster Response, Community well-being, Capacity Development, Resilience Investment, Disaster Risk Transferring, Land Use Planning, Local economic resilience, Physical/Structural Resilience and Sustainable Construction.
Introducing potential financial incentive strategies for the housing sector will result in developers, housing owners, contractors, and the rest of the supply chain, whose primary motive is to build the buildings with the least cost, naturally adopting disaster resilience into their practice as it is economically prudent to take advantage of the incentives.
| Date of Award | 9 Jun 2025 |
|---|---|
| Original language | English |
| Supervisor | Michael Ginger (Main Supervisor) |