Engineering Design Strategies for Safe and Resilient Housing

Existing research on preventive measures largely focuses on strengthening the resilience of building systems towards singular events. This perpetuates silo thinking, which is disadvantageous in both public health and natural disaster resilience strategies in disaster risk reduction efforts. Many preventative measures have not been translated into immediate action because they are considered too costly, with uncertain or distant rewards. This perception has resulted in significantly more funds being spent on recovery and repair than on risk reduction and increasing resilience. It is worth noting that figures informing this thinking are based on incomplete quantification of the human and financial costs of disasters. They do not consider the “uncounted” harms that may not be evident during the short term. For example, mold in a water-damaged home that takes time to grow can trigger or exacerbate respiratory disease months after the disaster, and exposure to extreme heat can lead not only to heatstroke, cardiovascular issues, or kidney disease—conditions for which it’s harder to pinpoint the cause. While the jury is still out on the total “count” of these longer-term health effects of disasters, recent public health emergencies have underscored the urgent need to anticipate and live with interconnected, compounding, and consecutive risks. This requires evidence and guidelines for stakeholders from multiple sectors on operational measures informed by an enhanced understanding of the complex risk landscape, community characteristics, and emerging technologies.

Dr. Esther Obonyo is a professor of Engineering Design and Architectural Engineering at Penn State. She is an affiliate faculty in the Colleges of Medicine, Arts and Architecture, and African Studies program. Between 2019 and 2024, she was the director of the Global Building Network, a partnership with the United Nations. Before joining Penn State, she was an Associate Professor at the University of Florida's (UF) Rinker School of Construction Management and a faculty entrepreneurship Fellow at UF’s Warrington College of Business. She has worked as an Engineer, Project Manager, and Innovations Analyst in Kenya, the UK, and the US. In her collaborative research, Dr Obonyo is developing integrated research methodologies for enhancing the building sector’s resilience to flood and heat-related disasters in a way that unlocks human and health benefits. Since 2008, she has led several NSF-funded projects in Florida, Pennsylvania in the US, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Mozambique, Brazil, and Panama. Dr Obonyo worked with the USAID as a Senior policy advisor through being awarded a 2014/ 2015 US Department of State Jefferson Science Fellow. She is the lead PI for a Belmont Forum project on Climate, Environment and Health. This project builds on the findings of a recently concluded Belmont Forum project on Disaster Risk Reduction.