Guidance Notes on Safer School Construction€¦ · Disaster Prevention Education, the IASC Education Cluster and the International Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction. INEE acknowledges

Guidance Noteson Safer School Construction

Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and RecoveryGFDRR Secretariat

1818 H Street NWWashington, DC 20433, USA

Telephone: 202 458 0268Facsimile: 202 522 3227E-mail: [email protected] Site: www.gfdrr.org

INEE Secretariat

c/o the International Rescue Committee122 East 42nd Street, 14th floorNew York, NY 10168-1289

Telephone: 212 551 2720Fax: 212 551 3185Email: [email protected] Site: www.ineesite.org

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Special thanks to the partners who support GFDRR’s work to protect livelihoods and improve lives: Australia, Canada, Denmark, European Commission, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction, USAID Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance, and the World Bank.

INEE would like to thank the World Bank, CIDA and Unbound Philanthropy for their financial support to the initiative.

Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery

The Guidance Notes on Safer School Construction were developed as collaboration between the Inter-Agency Network for Education in Emergencies (INEE) and the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery (GFDRR) at the World Bank, in partnership with the Coalition for Global School Safety and Disaster Prevention Education, the IASC Education Cluster and the International Strategy for Disaster Risk Reduction. INEE acknowledges the leading work of Darren Hertz, the consultant who facilitated the development of these Guidance Notes; Sanjaya Bhatia representing GFDRR; and Allison Anderson and Monica Garcia representing INEE.

In addition, hundreds of individuals and agencies contributed to this consultative process of workshops, peer reviews and the sharing of good practices and lessons learned from tools and country-specific case studies. In particular, the guidance and expertise of Garry De la Pomerai, James Lewis, Khizer Omer, and Marla Petal, were instrumental. For a full list of acknowledgements, please see Appendix 3.

INEE is a global, open network of over 3,500 members working in 115 countries within a humanitarian and development framework to ensure all persons the right to safe, quality education in emergencies, disasters and recovery. www.ineesite.org

GFDRR is a partnership of the International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (ISDR) system to support the implementation of the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA). The GFDRR provides technical and financial assistance to high risk low- and middle-income countries to mainstream disaster reduction in national development strategies and plans to achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

This volume is a product of the staff of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/ The World Bank. The findings, interpretations, and conclusions expressed in this paper do not necessarily reflect the views of the Executive Directors of The World Bank or the governments they represent. The World Bank does not guarantee the accuracy of the data included in this work. The boundaries, colors, denominations, and other information shown on any map in this work do not imply any judgment on the part of The World Bank concerning the legal status of any territory or the endorsement or acceptance of such boundaries.

The information and advice contained in this publication is provided as general guidance only. Every effort has been made to ensure the accuracy of the information. This publication is not a substitute for specific engineering advice. The World Bank, the Inter Agency Network for Education in Emergencies, and the authors accept no liability.

Design: [email protected] photo: © Mats Lignell, Save the ChildrenPhoto above: © The World Bank/Wu Zhiyi

Guidance Noteson Safer School ConstructionGlobal Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery

Table of Contents

Terminology: a chart of key terms ...................................................................................... iv

1. Executive Summary ........................................................................................................ 1

2. The Need for Safer Schools: Introduction, Objectives and Scope .................... 9

3. We CAN Build Safer Schools: Case Studies and Guiding Principles .............. 13

How safe are your schools? ........................................................................................ 18

4. Suggested steps towards safer school buildings ................................................... 19

4.1 Identifying Key Partners .................................................................................... 23

4.2 Determining risk .................................................................................................. 30

4.3 Defining Performance Objectives ................................................................... 38

4.4 Adopting Building Codes and Retrofit Standards ...................................... 42

4.5 Assessing a School site .................................................................................... 46

4.6 Assessing the Vulnerability of Existing School Buildings .......................... 54

4.7 Preparing a School or Retrofitting Design .................................................... 60

4.8 Assuring Quality of Construction and Retrofit Works ................................ 69

5. Basic Design Principles ............................................................................................... 75

5.1 Earthquakes .......................................................................................................... 77

5.2 Windstorms .......................................................................................................... 87

5.3 Flood ...................................................................................................................... 92

5.4 Landslide .............................................................................................................. 95

5.5 Wildfires ................................................................................................................ 97

6. Appendix 1. Rationale and Background to the Development of Guidance Notes on Safer School Construction ....................................................................... 99

Appendix 2: Safe and Child Friendly School Buildings: A Save the Children poster ............................................................................................................... 101

Appendix 3. Acknowledgements and Links to Additional Information,

List of Documents Consulted ...................................................................................... 102

TERMINOLOGY

Natural hazards are “Natural process or phenomenon that may cause loss of life, injury or other health impacts, property damage, loss of livelihoods and services, social and eco-nomic disruption, or environmental damage” if we do not take measures to prevent these impacts.

The term hazard event refers to the actual occurrence of a hazard. A hazard event may or may not result in the loss of life or damage to human interests.

A disaster is a “serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a society involving widespread human, material, economic or environmental losses and impacts, which ex-ceeds the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources”.

Risk is the product of hazards over which we have no control and vulnerabilities and ca-pacities over which we can exercise very good control.

Vulnerability is the characteristics and circumstances of a community, system or asset that make it susceptible to the damaging effects of a hazard. A school is said to be ‘at-risk’ or ‘vulnerable’, when it is exposed to known hazards and is likely to be adversely affected by the impact of those hazards if and when they occur.

Capacity is the combination of all the strengths, attributes and resources available within a community, society or organization that can be used to achieve disaster reduction and prevention. In this context, capacity refers to the knowledge, skills, human social and politi-cal relationships that can be used to reduce vulnerabilities.

Mitigation refers to the process of the lessening or limiting of the adverse impacts of hazards and related disasters.

Hazard (or Disaster) Resilience is the ability of a system, community or society ex-posed to hazards to resist, absorb, accommodate to and recover from the effects of a hazard in a timely and efficient manner, including through the preservation and restoration of its essential basic structures and functions.

Disaster Risk Reduction is the concept and practice of reducing disaster risks through systematic efforts to analyze and manage the causal factors of disasters, including through reduced exposure to hazards, lessened vulnerability of people and property, wise manage-ment of land and the environment, and improved preparedness for adverse events.

Preparedness is the knowledge and capacities developed by governments, professional response and recovery organizations, communities and individuals to effectively anticipate, respond to, and recover from, the impacts of likely, imminent or current hazard events or conditions.

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Prevention is the outright avoidance of adverse impacts of hazards and related disasters.

Responses is the provision of emergency services and public assistance during or imme-diately after a disaster in order to save lives, reduce health impacts, ensure public safety and meet the basic subsistence needs of the people affected.

Recovery is the restoration and improvement, where appropriate, of facilities, livelihoods and living conditions of disaster-affected communities, including efforts to reduce disaster risk factors.

Retrofit is the reinforcement or upgrading of existing structures to become more resistant and resilient to the damaging effects of hazards.

The above definitions were cited from the United Nations International Strategy for Disas-ter Reduction Terminology which “aims to promote common understanding and common usage of disaster risk reduction concepts and to assist the disaster risk reduction efforts of authorities, practitioners and the public”(UNISDR, 2009).

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Worldwide, approximately 1.2 billion students are enrolled in primary and secondary school; of these, 875 million school children live in high seismic risk zones and hundreds of millions more face regular flood, landslide, extreme wind and fire hazards.

Executive Summary

In January 2009, the Center for Research on Epidemiology of Disasters highlighted a spike in the number of people killed in natural disasters: the 2008 death toll of 235,816 was more than three times the annual average of the previous eight years. Moreover, it

noted that the biggest losses, from Cyclone Nargis and the Sichuan earthquakes, could have been substantially reduced had schools been built more disaster resilient. World-wide, approximately 1.2 billion students are enrolled in primary and secondary school; of these, 875 million school children live in high seismic risk zones and hundreds of millions more face regular flood, landslide, extreme wind and fire hazards. Although these children spend up to 50 percent of their waking hours in school facilities, all too often schools are not constructed or maintained to be disaster resilient. The death of children and adults in these schools causes irreplaceable loss to families, communities and countries and life-long injury to millions of children around the world. The time to say NO MORE to these preventable deaths is NOW; every new school must be constructed as a safer school and existing unsafe schools must be retrofitted to be disaster resilient. The Education for All (EFA) and Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) will not be achieved without the con-struction of safer and more disaster resilient education facilities.

The Guidance Notes on Safer School Construction present a framework of guiding prin-ciples and general steps to develop a context-specific plan to address this critical gap to reaching EFA and the MDGs through the disaster resilient construction and retrofitting of school buildings. The guidance notes consist of four components:

General information and advocacy points1. (Sections 2-4) briefly address the need and rationale for safer school buildings as well as the scope and intended use of the Guidance Notes. They also feature several success stories and list a number of essential guiding principles and strategies for overcoming common challenges.

A series of suggested steps2. (Section 5) that highlight key points that should be considered when planning a safer school construction and/or retrofitting initiative. Each step describes the processes, notes important decision points, highlights key issues or potential challenges, and suggests good practices, tools to facilitate the actions, and references resources to guide the reader to more detailed and context-specific information.

A compilation of basic design principles3. (Section 6) to identify some basic requirements a school building must meet to provide a greater level of protection. These principles are intended to facilitate a very basic understanding of the mea-sures that can be taken to make a school building more resilient to hazard forces.

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A broad list of references to resources4. (Appendix 3) for more detailed, techni-cal and context-specific information.

The Guidance Notes on Safer School Construction should be used by policymakers and planners of local, regional and national government bodies and all other organizations in-terested or engaged in enhancing the safety of school populations through improved haz-ard resistant construction and retrofitting of schools buildings. They can be used to guide discussion, planning and design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of school construction and should be utilized to strengthen Education Sector Plans and to develop National Action Plan for Safe Schools.

The guidance notes were developed through a consultative process involving hundreds of experts and practitioners from around the world who provided suggestions drawn from experience and sound research. In addition, the development involved an extensive vetting process of existing materials, good practices and case studies on safer school construc-tion. As a result, the suggestions contained within the guidance notes are drawn from a wide variety of individuals and groups, including governments, donors, disaster manage-ment organizations, engineers and architects, planners, construction managers, multilat-eral organizations, UN agencies, NGOs, academic institutions and educators. This is an evolving document that will be regularly revised to include new and appropriate research, insights and practices, thereby maintaining its relevancy and usefulness. To provide feed-back, please email: [email protected] and GFDRR.

Executive Summary1

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