RESEARCH ARTICLE


Can Building Codes Stop the Vicious Cycle of Recurrent Disaster?



América Bendito*, 1, Arnaldo Guitérrez2
1 Universidad de Los Andes, Mérida-Venezuela
2 Universidad Católica Andres Bello, Caracas, Venezuela


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Creative Commons License
© 2015 Bendito and Guitérrez

open-access license: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International Public License (CC-BY 4.0), a copy of which is available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcode. This license permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

* Address correspondence to this author at the Universidad de Los Andes, Mérida-Venezuela; Tel: +582742441532; Fax: +582742441532; E-mail: americabendito@gmail.com


Abstract

Despite advances and large amounts of money invested in science and technology to reduce disasters, many communities in developed and developing countries are still facing challenges to disaster reduction. Although we recognize the diversity of risk vulnerabilities, the focus of this paper will be on what we consider a fundamental vulnerability in urban and rural environments, namely, nonexistent or outdated building codes. We will review for different countries and contexts, the pre- and post-disaster building performance and building codes to understand what the main problems are, what we could be doing better, and what we can do to stop the vicious cycle of recurrent disasters.

Keywords: Building codes , capacity building, performance, resilence, risk, sustainability.