Civil Engineering and Disaster Responses in Developing Countries

This paper raises issues of how natural disasters affect developing countries. Responses to natural disasters, disaster risk, and the role of disaster research and practice are identified. Civil engineering as a science and art is based on the system of research, learning, and practice of developed countries. It depends for success on the institutional support available in the developed North but not in developing countries of the South. For effectiveness in its approach civil engineering must tie social, cultural, economic, physical, and any other relevant factors into the process of developing civil engineering products. The functionality of these products, their capacity to mitigate the effects of natural-disaster events, depends ultimately on practitioners' breadth and depth of understanding of life-cycle demands in developing countries. The effectiveness of contributions to the growth of disaster mitigation capacities in developing countries depends on the greater integration of research and practice by the civil engineering discipline and the social sciences.