Multicriteria Decision-Making Method for Sustainable Site Location of Post-Disaster Temporary Housing in Urban Areas

Abstract

Many people lose their homes around the world every year because of natural disasters, such as earthquakes, tsunamis, and hurricanes. In the aftermath of a natural disaster, the displaced people (DP) have to move to temporary housing (TH) and do not have the ability to choose the settlement dimensions, distributions, neighborhood, or other characteristics of their TH. Additionally, post-disaster settlement construction causes neighborhood changes, environmental degradation, and large-scale public expenditures. This paper presents a new model to support decision makers in choosing site locations for TH. The model is capable of determining the optimal site location based on the integration of economic, social, and environmental aspects into the whole life cycle of these houses. The integrated value model for sustainable assessment (MIVES), a multicriteria decision making (MCDM) model, is used to assess the sustainability of the aforementioned aspects, and MIVES includes the value function concept, which permits indicator homogenization by taking into account the satisfaction of the involved stakeholders.

The Use of MIVES as a Sustainability Assessment MCDM Method for Architecture and Civil Engineering Applications

“…MIVES can generate useful sustainability assessment tools in a broad range of cases within the building sector [55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69]. As seen in previous sections, it can define holistic tools for specific samples and study cases.…”

“…The use of these functions allows minimizing the subjectivity in the assessment. So far, MIVES has already been used for industrial buildings [60][61][62][63], underground infrastructures [64], hydraulic structures [65,66], wind towers [67], sewage systems [68], post-disaster sites and housing selection [69,70] and construction projects [71,72]. It should be highlighted that in the current Spanish Structural Concrete Code [73], MIVES method is proposed for assessing the sustainability of concrete structures [74].…”

A combination of the Knapsack algorithm and MIVES for choosing optimal temporary housing site locations: A case study in Tehran

“…The site selection problem, requirements and, thus, indicators were derived according to [1,10,[38][39][40][41][42][43]. However, the indexes were adjusted to reflect the chosen case study based on interviews with local experts.…”

“…In general, improper THU site location can lead to problems such as: (1) late delivery, (2) secondary hazards, (3) expenses, (4) the loss of previous communities, (5) effects on the host community and (6) environmental pollution [1,6,10]. However, decision-makers cannot avoid this approach, which has been used for many recovery programmes in recent decades, because of certain local limitations and THU benefits, including: (1) the lack of alternatives, (2) the huge demand, (3) the urgency of the situation, (4) climate conditions, (5) pressure from the DP, (6) DP reluctance, (7) fast delivery time, and (8) high quality [6,[11][12][13].…”

“…In recent years, MIVES has been used to assess sustainability and make decisions in the fields of (1) university faculty [24], (2) financial aspects of the Barcelona Metro system's Line 9 [25], (3) industrial buildings [26], (4) the Spanish Structural Concrete Code [27], (5) sewerage pipes [28], (6) school buildings [29], (7) developing the MIVES-EHEm-Mcarlo probabilistic method for large and complex buildings [30], (8) structural concrete columns [31], (9) wind-turbine supports [32] and (10) TH [10,11].…”