The Philippines: Typhoon Haiyan 10 years on

An opportunity to look back at the impact of shelter assistance. 

Typhoon Haiyan in 2013

On 8th November 2013, Typhoon Haiyan, locally known as Yolanda, made landfall in the Philippines. It was the most ferocious storm in recorded history and caused a swathe of destruction through the Visayas region, with wind speeds exceeding 300 km/h. In addition, a tsunami-like storm-surge devastated communities along the eastern seaboards of Leyte and Samar islands, claiming at least 6,300 lives and displacing 4 million people. Hundreds of thousands of families lost their homes and livelihoods. While accustomed to typhoons and floods, the Filipino people struggled to cope with the magnitude of the disaster triggered by this super-typhoon. Tacloban City was one of the worst affected urban areas but countless smaller rural communities were also devastated. To mark the ten-year anniversary of Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda, it is timely to look back, celebrate people’s efforts to recover, remember the people killed and the enduring trauma of such a momentous event. It is also an opportunity to reflect on the ways that academic research and humanitarian practice can inform each other, an ambition that sits at the heart of the Centre for Development and Emergency Practice (CENDEP) at Oxford Brookes University.

CENDEP has a long-standing partnership with CARE International UK’s (CIUK) Global Shelter Team. This partnership with humanitarian practitioners and researchers is one of many that underpins the teaching and learning in the Development and Emergency Practice / Global Development and Humanitarian Practice Master’s programme at CENDEP.  Associate lecturer Bill Flinn is a Senior Shelter Advisor at CIUK when he is not co-leading the Shelter After Disaster module with CENDEP’s Charles Parrack. Selecting the Shelter After Disaster module allows direct-entry Master’s students and those studying for their Part 2 Architecture qualification to gain a deep understanding of one of the UN-mandated humanitarian sectors; Shelter and Settlements. Many of Charles and Bill’s former students have gone on to work in the humanitarian Shelter Sector, as coordinators, practitioners and researchers, including Sue Webb (DEP Master’s student 2018-19) who currently works as a researcher at CENDEP and a Shelter Researcher at CIUK. Sue, Bill and Charles have worked together for several years on a series of research projects that have endeavoured to learn from and to enhance humanitarian shelter assistance. Bill was closely involved with CARE Philippines’ response to Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda and later research to understand the impacts and outcomes of such programming.

Response to Typhoon Haiyan by CARE Philippines 

CARE Philippines responded to the disaster in 2014-2015 through an innovative shelter programme, the Post-Haiyan Self-Recovery Housing Programme. In the wake of a disaster, communities and households are often the first responders, and frequently begin the process of rebuilding without support from external agencies—a process known as self-recovery. In the wake of a major disaster, needs almost certainly outstrip available resources, so CARE’s humanitarian programme in the Philippines placed self-recovery at the heart of its approach. It was designed to support people in their efforts to recover their homes and livelihoods, whilst encouraging them to rebuild in a way that reduced the vulnerabilities their homes had before the disaster. The photo below was taken two weeks after the typhoon—people were already starting to salvage materials and beginning to rebuild.

The programme targeted remote inland communities across the islands of Leyte and Panay. These rural communities had been severely affected, with a high percentage of totally destroyed houses. 16,000 families were supported with cash, materials and tools coupled with relevant technical assistance. CARE distributed Shelter Repair Kits consisting of CGI metal roofing sheets, tools, materials such as nails, wire and strapping, and a cash grant of PHP 3,000 (about £43). Several weeks later, some recipients qualified for a ‘top-up’ cash grant of PHP 5,000 (about £70). Many community members received technical training in carpentry and all beneficiaries were reached with awareness raising in safer building techniques. 

One of the key features of the programme was the use of ‘roving teams’ of carpenters and social mobilisers who accompanied the families in their rebuilding efforts with encouragement and technical advice. In the spirit of ‘bayanihan’, a Filipino word meaning a spirit of community cooperation and cohesion, the burden of construction was often shared between community members, ensuring that vulnerable families were given priority and extra help.

This innovative shelter response by CARE Philippines and its local implementing partners won the World Habitat Award in 2017.  The award press release at the time stated that

CARE Philippines have helped thousands of people to rebuild their lives and their homes quickly. This is the first time self-recovery has been used on such a large scale. It has helped more people more quickly than traditional disaster recovery programmes. The potential of this approach to be used elsewhere is absolutely huge. 

David Ireland, Director of World Habitat, funders and co-ordinators of the World Habitat Awards

Ongoing research on supporting self-recovery

CIUK’s Global Shelter Team and CENDEP have continued to attract academic research funding in order to develop and share knowledge about this ‘supporting self-recovery’ approach to shelter assistance. For example, a Global Challenges Research Fund Translations Award grant (2019-2021) enabled the co-production of the first guidance document for organisations interested in adopting this approach and aiming to produce an enabling environment for self-recovery in their programming. Pathways Home - Guidance for supporting shelter self-recovery was published through the Global Shelter Cluster’s Recovery Community of Practice in 2022. It was written through a collaborative effort informed by three learning workshops with input from a broad range of practitioners. More recently, Higher Education Innovation Fund (HEIF) funding from Brookes enabled the publication, translation and dissemination of Pathways Home into a much shorter ‘field version’:  Pathways Home-The Fast Track-Summary Guide, also available in Arabic, French and Spanish. CENDEP and CIUK co-lead the Global Shelter Cluster’s Recovery Community of Practice which creates a platform for wider influence and knowledge management within the sector. 

Ten years later—their stories

With support from USAID, the CARE Global Shelter Team conducted some valuable learning by reviewing the recovery in Tacloban City ten years on from the Typhoon. This presented a rare opportunity to revisit the scene of a major humanitarian response and ask the question: ‘what happened next?’. The research focus was early recovery programming that included repairs and the construction of transitional shelters in urban locations with a focus on community-led methodologies.

The review team of three faced some interesting challenges. Many years on people’s recall of the events was sometimes sketchy and contradictory. There was still evident trauma surrounding the disaster. Causal links between shelter and settlements and their contribution to recovery was hard to trace. Even finding many of the survivors was a challenge as some had moved multiple times and now live in government-funded permanent relocation sites many miles to the north of Tacloban City.

The government declared a 40 metres coastal ‘No Build Zone’ soon after the disaster. Ten years on, and the inhabitants of this coastal strip, mostly informal settlers who were washed out by the storm, have moved and moved and moved again, to be finally relocated seven miles to the north far from their livelihoods and communities. .

The team took a participatory, inclusive and collaborative approach to the research. Focus group discussions, co-production of recovery timelines, household interviews  and transect walks all contributed to learning. The team from CARE International UK was able to map the diverse pathways towards recovery that individuals and communities had taken. Ultimately, the goal of the research was to capture people’s experiences of, and perspectives on, humanitarian assistance, something that, due to lack of resources and capacity is not often possible, but that is essential to understanding the long term impact of INGO programmes on people’s lives. 

Initial findings and next steps

In the wake of the review, the team has started to reflect upon some of the crucial topics they are keen to take forward, with a view to these eventually contributing to reports and guidance for wider humanitarian learning around post-disaster shelter programming. Some of these topics include the importance of housing, land and property (HLP) issues and the long-term capacity INGOs can create within a community by supporting households to understand their rights to adequate housing. The conundrum of the pros and cons of relocation was another key area that emerged during the fieldwork, in particular the question of whether INGOs can or should play a role when populations are faced with ‘inevitable’ relocation. Finally, the gulf between humanitarian assistance and long-term housing solutions was a topic communities spoke about at length and an area INGOs continue to grapple with in the context of their programming.  

At this stage, some preliminary findings around practice and programming have been identified. The importance of putting communities at the centre of their own recovery, and the long-term impact this had on social cohesion, well-being and confidence within the community emerged very clearly from the household interviews and group discussions. There are further opportunities for multi-sectoral programming at the settlement level; participants felt that livelihood support would have had a positive impact on their overall recovery. 

Although the review is still in its early stages, the team has hopes that the findings from this case study can contribute to the development of wider discussion and thought on what ‘recovery’ looks like, how it can be supported by INGOs such as CARE and what aspects of programming help or hinder people from their own perspective.

A version of this blog also appeared on CARE Insights

“THE STORY OF THE NBZ OVER TEN YEARS”.

	Mapping a typical ten year journey of households displaced from the devastated coastal strip by Typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda: from the NBZ, via a transitional site to a permanent home ten kilometres to the north.
	2013 Typhoon Haiyan destroys urban coastal land in Tacloban that is later designated ‘No Build Zone’ (NBZ).
	The NBZ in 2016 (Magallanes / Old Road): People return and rebuild their homes themselves with salvaged material.
	2014 to 2016. Some families moved to ‘transitional sites’ for a limited period. Two years later, after the agreement with the landlord expired, many families had to return to the NBZ while they awaited a more permanent solution.
	NBZ (Anibong) 2018: Households continue to live in the NBZ in makeshift shelters constructed themselves while they wait for permanent housing.
	The No Build Zone 2023: the city government begins to clear the NBZ and relocate people to ‘permanent relocation sites’ to the North of the city. Despite this, some newer households are beginning to rebuild on the NBZ.
	Northern Relocation Site (Villa Sofia) 2023: households have gradually been relocated across the North in different sites. Despite challenges, life is beginning to normalise for households and some families have been able to establish businesses in the sites, as well personalise their houses to create a true sense of home.

The Struggle for Health - a second edition of the classic work

 Richard Carver writes:

David Sanders (1944-2019)

A very great number of people benefitted from the life of Professor David Sanders.* I should know, because I am one of them, although for me this was very personal - he was one of my oldest friends. Most importantly, David was an immensely influential figure in the progressive health movement internationally and in southern Africa. Central to that influence was his first book, The Struggle for Health: Medicine and the Politics of Underdevelopment. This first came out in 1985 and a second edition has just been published. (The open access e-book is here.)

It will be launched at an online lecture on Monday, 22 May.

First, a personal note. David died suddenly nearly four years ago. When one loses a friend the sadness is often expressed as a feeling that we didn’t spend enough time together - that there was so much more we wanted to talk about. In David’s case, this was literally true. We had been friends since the 1970s, but except for when we first met in London, we barely lived on the same continent. 

The Struggle for Health was of great importance in forming our friendship. David enlisted me as an editor and occasional amanuensis. This project began as a briefing booklet for medical personnel volunteering overseas. By the time I got involved, it was already shaping up to be a book. I knew nothing about health, but I could edit and write, so I came on board. Fairly soon, however, David was making use of me as a historical researcher. I ended up writing parts of the book and was very generously credited as co-author of the first edition. I say generously because the entire argument and theoretical framework of the book was David’s.

David was born in South Africa of Jewish descent - something he was very attached to. Students who have heard my lectures on refugees in history may recall a discussion of the arrival of Lithuanian Jews in the Cape during the ostrich boom. I owed all that  to David’s delightful anecdotes. He grew up in Zimbabwe, became a doctor, and was involved in the liberation movement. This was how I first came to know him and my collaboration on the book meant that I stumbled inadvertently, but delightedly, into a lifetime of work on human rights in Africa.

When he died, David was working on a second edition of The Struggle for Health. The central argument of the book is as relevant as ever - indeed some of it may read as truistic for the simple reason that it was ahead of the field and highly influential. It never lost touch with its origins as a briefing for health workers. The book argues that social determinants are by far the most important influences on health - not medicine of any sort, including preventive interventions, which were becoming more fashionable when he wrote the book. But that does not mean that the role of the health worker is irrelevant. If they understand these determinants and are prepared to work with others for social transformation, then health workers have a part to play. The book is particularly important in considering the role of community health workers, a development that David championed on his return to Zimbabwe at independence in 1980 - and later for nearly 30 years back in South Africa. Many of these experiences are reflected in greater depth in the new edition.

David did not finish the revised edition, but his widow, Professor Sue Fawcus, was determined that the work should be completed. A small committee took this on, including Sue herself, Wim de Ceukelaire, and Barbara Hutton. I was asked to review the draft, but my name, quite rightly, is no longer on the cover.

The second edition of The Struggle for Health is being launched on 22 May at the annual David Sanders Lecture in Public Health and Social Justice, to be delivered by Professor Fran Baum of the University of Adelaide, and with contributions from the book’s editorial committee.

The event is being streamed and is at 14.00 South African time, which is 13.00 BST.

 

* Not to be confused with the former CENDEP director, David Sanderson.

The Emigrant’s Adieu - The story of Irish and Scottish migrants told through their music

Richard Carver introduces his performance/lecture on Irish and Scottish migration for the Oxford Human Rights Festival.

There are obviously many downsides to retiring from CENDEP - but one of the positive things for me has been to free a lot of time to work on one of my passions: music. For more than 50 years I have been an amateur musician, with more enthusiasm than talent, if truth be told. In retirement, my focus has been much less on the classical music that I have played for most of my life than on the traditional music of the British and Irish Isles.

As I immersed myself in this music, I became interested, perhaps rather perversely, in one particular aspect: how tunes got their names. 

 

Mourning for the Cradle of Civilization[1], Cities of Heroes[2] and Veterans[3]

By Fatma Ozdogan

On 6^th of February, two earthquakes hit the city of Kahramanmaraş in southeastern Türkiye. First earthquake Mw7.8 was followed by another one only nine hours after with Mw7.7. The impact was enormous. 10 cities (Kahramanmaraş, Hatay, Gaziantep, Osmaniye, Adıyaman, Malatya, Şanlıurfa, Adana, Diyarbakır and Kilis) are terribly affected by the earthquakes. Home to 13,5 million people, including 1.7 million refugees from Syria, more than 39.000 people (based on the latest reported number in the 12^th day of the disaster) lost their lives. The number is expected to increase with the removal of the rubbles in the coming days. We who are left behind are still in deep sorrow and mourning.

Like any border city, these cities carried a remarkable cultural heritage from the past. Host to dozens of civilizations, their stories go back to 100BC. They witnessed empires, wars, conflicts, migration waves for centuries. The city patterns were reflecting their abundant gastronomy blending many cultures, architectural assets and several languages used in this geography. Two earthquakes and a corrupted system swept away this cultural wealth, as are tens of thousands of our people who have died under the rubble.

Essential infrastructure such as airports and roads are damaged, which caused delay in humanitarian aid. In some cities, search and rescue operations did not start until the next day. Cold weather conditions worsened the situation for people under the rubble, also for the survivors outside. Management of a disaster in this scale was not an easy task. Authorities are still criticized due to the miscoordination. People desperately waited for help for hours for their loved ones under the collapsed buildings. We counted every minute. Minutes became hours, hours became days, days became weeks. Time took our hope to save more people. We lost so many under the collapsed buildings. Each of us who survived has left a part of ourselves under those rubbles. Traces will never be erased.

Crying to the cameras, people expressed their indescribable pain: I lost 5,6, 7..10 family members. I lost my daughter, I lost my mother, I lost my father, my wife, my husband, my granny, my cousin, my aunt, my uncle, my brother, my sister..

People buried their loved ones with their bare hands. While thousands of people are still under the rubble, their families are not leaving until the wreck removal so they can save the dead bodies and bury them traditionally, at least.

Arial view of Ataturk Street in Hatay (Cumhuriyet Gazetesi, 2023)

This geography has experienced similar pains in the past. Somehow some lessons were taken from those incidents.

In 1999, Mw 7.6 earthquake hit Marmara Region and caused more than 17.000 deaths. This became a milestone in Türkiye’s risk perception, disaster preparedness and building codes. The country built the disaster management system, strengthen the building codes and design regulations, introduced a control mechanism to ensure the quality of the constructions. Additionally, following another earthquake in 2011 in the eastern Türkiye, Van, an urban transformation law is passed. The law was supposed to lead to the modification / reconstruction of the buildings at disaster risks based on the updated building codes. In this way, the government was securing the transformation of old building stock and modifying them.

So, what happened? Why, 24 years after the massive earthquake in the same country, are we seeing the same devastation, even more severe than the past experiences? Why do ten-fifteen storey buildings turn into grains of sands and become graves to people? Why did we fail to prevent this disaster? Didn’t we know that it was coming? Weren’t we prepared enough? Didn’t we learn from previous disasters? Or is it simply because we forget quickly?

The response is complicated. Though, answers to these questions are not secrets either.

First of all, we are aware of the risks. We are quite familiar with the fact that Türkiye is vulnerable to earthquake risks. We know that Earthquake doesn't kill, building does; or there is no such thing as natural disaster, natural hazards become disasters if we are exposed to them! But awareness doesn’t reflect on decision-making process neither on the public demand.

Zoning amnesties as a political tool before every election is a common application. Zoning amnesty means any building, or an additional level or section to a building that did not receive engineering services and are not certified by authorities can be forgiven and officialise by the authorities. A few months before this disaster, another zoning amnesty was proposed by the government, as an election is on the way. The announcements of amnesties were always welcomed by the communities as they had chances to officialise their informal buildings. Even though specialists and experts are emphasizing the mistake in every amnesty, their voices are ignored totally. Twenty zoning amnesty was applied since 1948, and millions of housing and commercial unites are officialised with this method since then.

Secondly, the approach to urban land, urbanism, right to housing has shifted completely over the last 20 years. Construction became the main industry to develop the economy for the government instead of seeing it as a way to providing services and infrastructure to the public. Contractors became the main leaders of the construction industry, not specialists nor the experts. Expert involvement in the planning and decision making is totally ignored, their voices are suppressed over the years. The control mechanism of chamber of engineers and architects are canceled by using the delay they cause during the review as an excuse. Even, contractors have right to hire their own auditors and pay them directly. The whole process leads the lack of third-party control both in the planning and application processes. Not surprisingly, this conflict of interest between the contractors and auditors led to negligence of the technical requirements. Eventually, two-three years of residences collapsed in the latest earthquakes.

Similarly, mentioned urban transformation law was managed by the contractors. A great chance was missed to rebuild the areas at risk by giving the power to the contractors. Individual reconstructions prioritizing the benefit of the contractors deepen the spatial inequalities and exposed more people to disasters rather than reducing the vulnerabilities. Tackling the disaster risks on the individual building level caused missing the bigger picture in the neighborhood or city level.

From the land management point of view, land-use restrictions are rarely applied in the city centers due to the economic value of the land. The urban transformation and zoning laws does not lead to the construction ban in the lands prone to disaster risks. Instead, engineering solutions are imposed even for the lands with high disaster risks, and even when the land is directly affected by a disaster and buildings are damaged there.  

Another reason is the quality of university education. Almost every city in Türkiye has at least one university. The number is more in mega-cities like Istanbul, Ankara, İzmir. Architecture, engineering, and urban planning departments exist almost in all of them. However, not every department has the same quality level of education. Lack of qualified academics and services cause the non-qualified graduates. Furthermore, there is not a professional qualification system for graduates to be authorized to approve/sign a project. Any person graduated from the bachelor’s degree immediately obtain the right to approve a project. Considering the geographical risk factors, frequency of the disasters and the scale of the impacts, education quality and professional qualification system must be prioritized, and investments should be directed to the universities aiming higher quality.    

The role of unplanned migration movement and the social, environmental and economic pressure as a result can be named as another reason to exposure to disaster risks. Rapidly increasing urban density and uncontrolled urban sprawl challenged the governance of the affected cities. Especially Gaziantep and Hatay were already struggling to provide urban infrastructure to the increasing population before the earthquakes.

Finally, shortcomings in the risk perception and its consideration in the disaster management system is critical. Currently, investments and expertise focus on disaster intervention and post-disaster recovery, while still there is a great need for improving the capacities in the disaster preparedness.

Post-disaster reconstruction is a complex and sophisticated process. As listed above, it has many dimensions, and it cannot be done without addressing the root causes of the damage. An interdisciplinary, inclusive approach is the key to address the needs, reduce the pre-disaster vulnerabilities and avoid similar pains in the future.

Although this complex process requires time, upcoming election in 2023 makes the situation challenging politically for the current government. As a result, in the first week of the disaster, President Erdogan announced his promises to complete the reconstruction of the affected cities in one year. By acknowledging that the management was not impeccable, he claimed that no country in the world could manage a disaster of this scale perfectly, because it was the disaster of the century. This phase he used; disaster of a century; became iconic among the government. It is used as an excuse for any miscoordination or shortages in the management.

There is no doubt that the scale of the disaster is enormous. But there is no doubt that it could have been prevented and it could have been managed better.

Some decisions have been highly criticized by large majorities. For instance, as a quick solution to the housing needs, university students staying in the dormitories were told to evacuate immediately. Some of the earthquake victims were placed in these dormitories in all cities of Türkiye. University education is converted to remote. While quality of education was on the target of the disaster impact, this action was called into doubt. Especially while most of the current students lost already a few years due to the pandemic, mostly in applied sciences.

Another criticized decision was closing the primary level education in all cities until 20^th February, and indefinitely in the 10 affected cities (decision will be revaluated on 1^st March). Pedagogists state that closing the schools can only deepen the trauma of affected children and emphasize that in the 1999 Marmara earthquake education never stopped in any level.

With the given promises to rise these cities from their ashes, starting the wreck removal in the first week of disaster was another subject of critics. While people still had their hopes to save more people from the rubbles, rescuing more people alive during the wreck removal created another trauma in our minds. Additionally, as recommended by lawyers, collapsed buildings are evidence of crimes and a legal process should be followed before starting to clean the rubbles. Lastly, a tender process should be followed to award the companies for wreck removal which is not the case today.

It is certain that decisions need to be taken urgently due to the nature of the conditions; however, long-term impacts should be considered in a sensitive situation like that. Impetuous decisions usually neglect people’s voices. Identifying the needs of communities and planning based on the conditions require time. Post-disaster reconstruction has a responsibility to rebuild these cities by respecting historical and cultural values. While millions flee to neighboring cities, when they come back, destroying the traces of the past can only deepen their trauma and make the adaptation impossible. We need to keep in mind that we own a proper recovery to the cradle of civilization, and cities of heroes and veterans.

A graffiti in the City of Hatay, also known as Cradle of Civilization: Do not lose your hope Hatay, we will come back. (Credit: Barış Atay)

 I want to conclude with some recommendations for the reconstruction projects. Further research needs to be conducted further during this process in order to rebuild social, economic and physical lives in these cities.

First of all, solutions for housing, infrastructure, waste management, food security, livelihood should be planned in three time periods: Short-term, middle-term and long term. Short term solutions are ongoing for repairing the basic infrastructure. Planning for the longer periods should start immediately with the contributions of stakeholders. Revisiting the previous experiences and predicting the long-term impacts of applied solutions is critical at this stage.

Considering the reconstruction of these cities is not possible until the completion of damage assessment. The extent of the destruction varies in different provinces and districts. While destruction occurs at the city level in some districts (Elbistan, Defne, İslahiye, Nurdağı) and provinces (Hatay, Adıyaman, Kahramanmaraş), there are also provinces where the destruction is relatively low. Various solutions should be produced and should be developed with the participation of communities, specialists, scholars, experts, and decision makers.

The planning studies should be designed within the framework of the principles that will reduce these risks and take preventive measures. The plans to be made during the reconstruction process of our cities must necessarily include a holistic disaster prevention policy. Solutions should be in urban scale.

A comprehensive post-disaster reconstruction planning with social, environmental, and physical dimensions is essential in order to build resilient cities. While a similar size earthquake is expected in Istanbul in the next thirty years, reconsidering all the aspects of this damage is vital, to be prepared for future disasters not only in the affected cities but in every city of Türkiye.

Ancient and historical value of affected cities should be in the center of planning and decision-making. Principles should be designed according to these assets and integrated in the solutions in different levels.

The state of building inventory (even though they were not damaged) should be revisited in cities prone to disaster risks.  

Urban transformation law should be revised with more consideration of the current disaster risks, land management and vulnerabilities. Most vulnerable regions should be prioritized during the renovation.

Observing the impacts of applied solutions is essential. A lessons-learned mechanism should be integrated in the disaster management system. Reconstructed areas should be analysed in various period of times in the future. We need to ensure that lessons are taken from this experience.

I sincerely hope that the reconstruction process will produce broad solutions, including the problems that existed in the region before the disaster. A human-oriented urbanism, inline with the local needs and using the modern technologies, recovery will lead to tackle the deepening injustice through spatial solutions, and reduce pre-disaster vulnerabilities.

 

References:

Cumhuriyet Gazetesi, 2023. Depremin ardından Hatay'daki yıkım havadan görüntülendi. [En ligne]
Available at: https://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/turkiye/galeri-depremin-ardindan-hataydaki-yikim-havadan-goruntulendi-2048787 [Accessed on 17 February 2023].

 

Author: Fatma Özdoğan

As an architect based in Türkiye, Fatma Özdoğan has international professional experience in Türkiye, Azerbaijan, Qatar, research experience in Colombia, Lebanon and Türkiye. After completing her studies in Türkiye, she was offered a scholarship at Oxford Brookes University, UK to study the MA Development and Emergency Practice programme. She improved her knowledge on the interrelationship between sustainable urban development and natural/man-made crises. She recently began her doctoral studies at the faculty of planning at the University of Montreal, Canada. Her research interest is disaster management with a particular interest in post-disaster reconstruction. She studies the relationship between the country's responses to disasters and development. Her current research aims to understand the needs of communities as architects and to propose sustainable solutions to bridge the gaps between the needs and the services provided.

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[1] Hatay has a historical importance for Türkiye, as the last city joined to the Turkish lands with ambition and dedication of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. The name of the city, Hatay, is given by Atatürk.  

[2] Kahramanmaraş (Compound Name, Kahraman – Maraş) – The forename, Kahraman which means hero, is given by the Turkish Grand National Assembly (TBMM) in 1973 with respect to their efforts in the Liberty War (1919-1922)

[3] Gaziantep (Compound Name, Gazi-Antep)) The forename, Gazi which means Veteran, is given by the Turkish Grand National Assembly (TBMM) in 1921 with respect to their efforts in the Liberty War (1919-1922).