New Scientist magazine interviews Build Change founder
By Phil McKenna, New Scientist magazine (UK weekly), May 25, 2011
Elizabeth Hausler aims to bring quake-resistant construction to the developing world
Why do you say that it's not earthquakes that kill people but poorly built buildings?
Inspecting the aftermath of earthquakes throughout the developing world, I've seen a lot of collapsed buildings that were made of unreinforced masonry. Most of the people that died during these earthquakes were killed because of such poorly constructed buildings. Fatalities from earthquakes are a man-made problem so there has to be a man-made solution.
What motivated you to do something to address this problem?
I was halfway through graduate school studying to be an earthquake engineer when I went to Gujarat, India, in 2001. There I saw horrible loss of life and destruction due to collapsed buildings in the aftermath of a massive earthquake. Prior to that I had worked as a brick mason and I thought maybe there was something I could do to help.
In 2004 you founded the organisation Build Change. Why?
Our aim is to greatly reduce deaths, injuries, and economic losses from earthquakes in developing countries. Typically, after an earthquake, NGOs will import building materials and build new homes without putting in place models that create long-term change. We're training local people, using local materials and working with government agencies to establish safer and lasting building standards.
What inexpensive techniques can be used to make a building earthquake-proof?
In Indonesia, for example, the brick walls of many houses are not very strong. It is hot there and the bricks are very porous, so if they are laid when they are dry, they absorb the moisture from the mortar and will not stick together. Just by soaking the bricks in water before building a wall you can double its strength. In Western Sumatra, Indonesia, some homeowners have seen their brick houses collapse in one, two or even three earthquakes and so are shifting back to timber-based homes that are more earthquake resistant. These are actually cheaper and easier to build too.
Where we have worked in China, Indonesia and Haiti, builders were trying to use a method called confined masonry to construct stronger buildings: masonry walls are confined by reinforced concrete beams and columns. This helps hold the bricks in place during an earthquake. But they were not doing it correctly and in many cases there was no connection between the masonry walls and columns.
Simple changes to the sequence of construction, like building the walls before the columns, can make a big difference to the building's strength.
What is the next step for Build Change?
We just finished our first training programme with government engineers in Haiti on retrofitting existing buildings. Until now, we have only worked on new construction projects but retrofitting is something that can be implemented in a region before an earthquake occurs.
Profile: Elizabeth Hausler is founder of Build Change, a non-profit organisation which designs and helps to build earthquake-resistant housing in developing countries. This month she won the $100,000 Lemelson-MIT sustainability award.
Building Stronger Communities out of the Rubble
By Susan Carey Dempsey
On Philanthropy, May 20, 2011
http://onphilanthropy.com/2011/building-stronger-communities-out-of-the-rubble/
In the wake of earthquakes that have left unprecedented death and destruction in several countries, the announcement this week of Dr. Elizabeth Hausler as the recipient of the 2011 $100,000 Lemelson-MIT Award for Sustainability was particularly relevant. The Lemelson-MIT Program honored Hausler, CEO and Founder of Build Change, in recognition of her engineering accomplishments and, especially, the creation of a model that establishes sustainable earthquake-resistant housing in the developing world. Hausler and her team took an innovative approach to involve community members in developing a reconstruction solution to combat building collapses during natural disasters, which can potentially save thousands of lives.
The January 2010 earthquake in Haiti alone claimed hundreds of thousands of lives when the 7.0 magnitude tremor crumbled homes into rubble. The Haiti earthquake demonstrated cruelly how a lack of building standards can lead to poorly designed and constructed homes, which collapse when earthquakes strike, displacing, injuring and killing people. Realizing through her work in previous earthquake-stricken developing countries that there was a simple solution to this man-made problem, Hausler had created a six-step process for home reconstruction that yields sturdy, economically and culturally feasible buildings which she has been implementing since 2004.
Build Change’s model is based on simplicity, and on the important concept of empowering homeowners to rebuild their own communities. Beginning with a thorough examination of a region’s unsafe housing issues, Hausler’s team makes slight adjustments to the original building construction plans rather than overhauling an area’s traditional architectural structure. Build Change then helps community members work with locally available materials and labor to rebuild. The outcome is a cost-effective, easily modified, and most importantly, culturally accepted construction method the homeowner adopts and understands.
Dr. Hausler spoke with onPhilanthropy after her award was announced, and we asked how she had come to understand the importance of involving the local homeowners in changing the building standards:
If there was an Aha moment, it came as a result of the process of interviewing both the homeowners and the agencies and government officials involved in the reconstruction process. I had seen how unsustainable rebuilding practices failed in India, for example, because the homeowners hadn’t been consulted. A door might be placed on the wrong side of the house, for example, so the homeowner would knock a hole in the other side of the house. If you can engage the homeowner by listening to his architectural traditions, he will be more open to accepting the technical changes you’re recommending. It really began to infuse the engineering work with the cultural side, giving it true meaning. This has become my dream job, fusing the human involvement with the engineering. (end quote)
Build Change homes cost anywhere from $3,000 to $17,000 less than similar structures built in donor-driven environments. Despite the clear benefits, many communities are rooted in custom and therefore resistant to change. As a solution, Build Change educates and trains anyone who will play a role in the rebuilding process, including homeowners themselves, materials vendors, engineers and builders. The nonprofit also works with local governments to instruct officials on the technology, helping to enforce the reconstruction model as a new building standard, reducing community resistance and leading to further implementation.
“Dr. Hausler’s work proves that the wheel doesn’t need to be re-invented. Innovation as a result of smart improvements to existing technologies can be equally effective. Elizabeth is a remarkable example of someone whose work is a catalyst for wide-scale adoption by using a model that is economically and socially sustainable,” said Joshua Schuler, executive director of the Lemelson-MIT Program. “She realizes that local people will use only what skilled labor and materials are readily available in their communities to build their homes. Leveraging that knowledge, and coupling it with her engineering aptitude and ability to teach, she has transformed the standard donor-driven model of post-earthquake reconstruction.”
Dr. Hausler was in Haiti the week before last, working on a project that is providing the “first ever training of government engineers, through the Ministry of Public Works, in retro-fitting existing buildings. It was super-exciting: one engineer said it was the first effective use of outside aid.”
The organization has partnered with some of the world’s largest relief agencies, including Mercy Corps, Oxfam and Save the Children, which is providing livelihood grants to encourage local block producers to make the better building blocks to ensure that reconstruction will be of higher standards. “ The benefit of working with these major NGO’s is that they enable us to scale up,” she explained.
Currently, Build Change has improved the design and construction of nearly 20,000 homes, impacting more than 73,000 people in China, Haiti and Indonesia.