Engineering Perspectives on Reducing Hurricane Damage to Housing in CARICOM Caribbean Islands

Abstract

The annual hurricane related losses to Caribbean residential buildings in the past two decades highlight the societal and socioeconomic vulnerability of these islands. Despite considerable hurricane disaster mitigation activity in the Caribbean Community and Common Market (CARICOM), the housing sector in particular remains at an elevated risk for damage. Improving the structural resiliency of homes has been largely ineffective, as was illustrated by damage to most of the Grenadian housing stock from Hurricane Ivan in 2004. While international and regional interventions have provided emergency postdisaster aid, sustained efforts to improve design and construction practices and foster sustainable mitigation activity are lacking, with the limited projects not gaining much traction in the construction sector. This paper provides an exploratory framework of the issues surrounding wind damage mitigation and the construction of residential structures to improve overall hurricane resilience in the CARICOM states. It synthesizes 35 years of research findings about Caribbean hazard mitigation initiatives, many of which are not available to researchers in other geographic settings. The uniqueness of the Caribbean housing stock, the importance of small-scale economies, the existing socioeconomic constraints, and the effectiveness of regional and international residential construction mitigation strategies are also evaluated. Finally, the paper identifies and prioritizes critical avenues of future research to improve the resiliency of the CARICOM residential building stock.