Shelters

The JO-CREWSNet Climate Resilient Structures Flagship initiative aims to leverage regional climate modeling of future wind, inundation, and heat risk to build capacity and inform the design and implementation of climate resilient structures.

Our goal is to enable a socio-technical system in which regional climate modeling supports decisions at multiple levels that reduce loss of life and livelihoods during future extreme conditions.

We seek to improve access to resilient structures through several mutually-reinforcing activities:

  • Modeling: Estimate future wind, inundation, and heat risk up to 2050
  • Information sharing and decision support: Analyze vulnerability, recommend building guidelines, develop tools for disseminating data and information
  • Capacity building: Evaluate and offer trainings on adaptive construction techniques
  • Pilots: Build or retrofit structures that provide shelter
  • Advocacy: Work with policy makers to incorporate future hazard risk into national climate plans

Formal Cyclone Shelter Service Gaps in Baradal Union

Below, we present a preliminary visualization of cyclone shelter coverage gaps in one of Jameel Observatory-CREWSnet study sites – Baradal Union, located in Assasuni Upazila of Satkhira District. Some post-processing was applied to survey data collected by BRAC in 2024 to generate these displays.

Baradal Union Formal Shelter Capacity Summary

Population: Households Residing In Union27,484
Average Household Size4.22
Population: Total Formal Shelter Capacity3,570
Population: Homes With Strong Construction (Informal Shelter)9,521
Population: Living Near Formal Shelter But Above Capacity19,818
Population: Living Further than 1.5 km from Formal Shelter4,097
Population: Unserved By Formal Shelter23,915

We highlight the location of existing formal cyclone shelters in the union in blue, as well as the 1.5 km radius around them. This radius represents the maximum distance that shelter-goers typically travel from their home. The checkered layer underneath shows the distribution of the population presently under-served by formal shelters in each grid, due to distance of the nearest existing shelter and its capacity. Across Baradal, the total shelter capacity is approximately 3,500 people, but the union population is about 28,000. The population layer reveals a larger under-served population in the north and north-east. A higher resolution population layer can be viewed by navigating to the layer panel on the left, and hiding the 0.5 km grid result. This layer reveals that although shelter-goers might travel up to 1.5 km during cyclone emergencies, shelters may not have enough space for all people living within 1.5 km distance.

Three locations, marked in green , represent sites at which a new shelter construction might have high impact. Site 1 was identified visually as a location near several significantly under-served areas. Site 2 is the location whose maximum service radius encompasses the greatest underserved population in Baradal. Site 3 is the location with the smallest spread of its serviced population, assuming the population capacity of the largest existing shelter in Baradal. These sites illustrate different impact prediction approaches, the utility of decision support maps for capacity building, and the kinds of analysis that hyper-local shelter and population data enable.

Future visualizations aim to incorporate factors such as barriers to shelter use and resilience of present shelters to future climate.

BRAC Cyclone Shelter

Watch the video to the left to learn more about BRAC’s Cyclone Shelter work.

Data Collection and Aggregation

We have aggregated foundational data layers related to understanding the current state of climate vulnerability in Baradal and Munshiganj. The BRAC Climate Change Program (CCP) conducted a survey to inventory existing shelters in these two Unions. 32 existing shelters were identified and characterized. In addition, the team conducted interviews with 2-3 users of each cyclone shelter with total of 76 users.

Climate-Resilient House (CRH)

A climate-resilient house (CRH) is a flagship model of the BRAC CCP, designed for vulnerable coastal populations aiming to respond to climate induced disaster and long-term changes resulting from climate change consequences. Through careful architectural planning, maintaining construction practices following the Bangladesh National Building Code (BNBC) 2020, ensuring affordability, habitability, accessibility and cultural adequacy, the resilient housing considers a 100–year return period along with the prediction of 2050 sea level rise and area-specific wind speed.

To date, BRAC has built 35 CRHs in coastal areas, with two additional updated CRH in progress. Through the shelter flagship, we will incorporate more precise and regional projected climatic hazard information (inundation, wind speed, surge height, heat, etc.) into the design process and iterate the housing model to fit the geographical, future climate, and cultural context.

Future Work

Over the next three years, our team plans to continue conducting activities to inform the design of future shelter pilots and capacity building activities, including:

  • Use current model outputs to develop initial recommendations for shelter hazard durability requirements 
  • Incorporate inundation risk modeling into analysis and IS/DS tools
  • Survey adaptation approaches in construction and design strategies, including differences between city and rural structures
  • Iterate on conceptual designs for information sharing and decision support tools and build interactive visualizations on the JO-CREWSnet data hub 
  • Define specific interventions that may be evaluated using rigorous approaches, such as randomized control trials, or indicators
  • Develop capacity building activities (e.g. trainings, adaptation clinic tools) to help vulnerable people decide to harden their homes or develop a sheltering strategy

In the long term, we aim to:

  • Publish nation-wide Information Sharing/Decision Support Tools (IS/DS) tools for a broad group of users
  • Engage policy makers to update building codes and/or incorporate new shelter guidelines into high-level policy documents