Knowledge Gaps in the Construction Industry to Increase Societal Resilience: A Local and National Government Perspective

Over the last decade, a series of increasingly devastated natural disasters have been witnessed
across the world. The disaster threats were further aggravated due to various social, economic
and environmental trends, such as, growing population, urbanisation, inequality and global
environmental change. This demanded a more proactive approach to reduce the vulnerability
and exposure, and to increase resilience. For proper implementation of resilience measures,
various efforts are required from construction practitioners. Accordingly, construction
practitioners are expected to play a key role at each stage of the disaster management cycle.
However, recent literature concerning disasters has highlighted the inadequate engagement of
the construction industry in reducing the risk of disasters. This emphasises the need to engage
the construction professionals adequately, in achieving a resilient built environment. Therefore,
it is of paramount importance to provide construction industries with the necessary capacity and
capability to plan, design, build and operate in such a way that will reduce vulnerability and
exposure, and increase resilience. In order to address this challenge, CADRE (Collaborative
Action towards Disaster Resilience Education), which is an EU funded research project, intends
to develop an innovative professional doctoral programme that addresses the career needs, and
upgrade the knowledge and skills, of practising professionals working to make communities
more resilient to disasters. Accordingly, the first phase of the research involved, capturing the
needs of 5 stakeholder groups associated in disaster resilience and management as well as
current and emerging skills and ultimately knowledge gaps, applicable to construction
practitioners towards enhancing societal resilience to disasters. In this context, the paper aims to
analyse the current and emerging knowledge gaps of construction practitioners as highlighted
by the national and local government stakeholders. Accordingly, the paper provides an
extensive analysis of knowledge gaps, which were captured via 20 semi-structured interviews
with national and local government stakeholders. Knowledge gaps were analysed in relation to
social, technological, environmental, economic and institutional factors and property life-cycle
stages. Some of the key knowledge gaps identified in the study are, business continuation
management; damage assessments and claims; financing, budgeting and estimating; building
codes, regulations and planning; resilient buildings and infrastructure; community
empowerment; stakeholder management; legal frameworks and compliance; disaster risk
assessment; environmental impact assessment and management; and knowledge management.