Presenters

Elizabeth just finished an 8 month Fulbright fellowship in Gujarat, India assessing and assisting with the post-earthquake housing reconstruction and retrofitting programs. During a two-year period, 90 NGOs facilitated the construction of over 40,000 homes while individuals re-built or repaired over 25,000 homes with government compensation. The program used over US$20 million in financial resources.

Some alternative technologies were very successfully employed in the reconstruction, such as cement-stabilized interlocking earth blocks and cement-stabilized rammed earth. These building technologies have been adapted to incorporate earthquake-resistant design elements and are arguably more sustainable because they use locally available and inexpensive materials, are accepted and easily maintained by the beneficiaries, and typically take on a vernacular form.

Per Elizabeth thoght, there are several lessons to be learned from the program as the need for skilled field engineers trained in earthquake-resistant construction was underestimated. And, in some cases, the needs and opinions of the beneficiaries were not taken into consideration prior to housing construction, and as a result, some houses remain unoccupied. Also, attempts have been made to start lasting, sustainable small businesses by transferring the alternative technologies from the NGOs to the local artisans (for example, by setting up building centers for producing cement-stabilized earth blocks). These efforts have met with little success due to lack of demand and lack of entrepreneurial skills among the artisan groups.

Elizabeth has an MS and PhD in geotechnical engineering from UC-Berkeley, and an MS in environmental science from CU-Denver (while going to school in Denver, she worked for Dames & Moore on environmental and geotechnical projects). She minored in structural engineering at UC Berkeley and spent several summers during high school and college working as a brick mason in rural Illinois, hence her interest in low-cost, earthquake-resistant construction.