SP Chile Field Trip 8 - CARLtd Platt Reconstruction... · Margarita Yisti Yana, Committee member JJVV, local residents’ association Field trip organisation: ... This is a report

Reconstruction in Chile post earthquake

ReBuillDD field trip September 2011 Stephen Platt

10 January 2012

Published online January 2012 at: www.carltd.com/downloads

Reference:

Platt S (2012) Reconstruction in Chile post earthquake. ReBuillDD field trip September 2011, Cambridge Architectural Research.

ReBuilDD Field Trip September 2011 RECONSTRUCTION IN CHILE POST 2010 EARTHQUAKE Stephen Platt 10 January 2012

Rebuilding, Cerro Centinela, Talcahuano, Concepción, Chile

UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE CAR

ImageCat

EPSRC FIELD TRIP TO CHILE, SEPTEMBER 2011 2

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The funding for this field trip was provided by the EPSRC. ReBuilDD is a consortium of Cambridge University, Cambridge Architectural Research, ImageCat and the Humanitarian Centre. Stephen Platt is Chairman of Cambridge Architectural Research. We received the most generous help and hospitality from everyone we met in Chile. In particular:

Central government planners Professor Marcial Echenique, Asesor Ministerio de Transportes y Telecomunicaciones (MTT) Cristián López Ugalde, Unidad transporte Sustenible y Urbanismo Asesor, Ministerio de Transportes y Telecomunicacions (MTT) clopezu@mttcl Pablo Allard Serrano, Formerly Coordinador Nacional Programa de Reconstrucción Urbana, Ministerio de Vivienda y Urbanismo MINVU, currently Decano de la Universidad del Desarrollo, Chile Slaven Razmilic Burgos, Head of the Urban Observatory Ministerio de Vivienda y Urbanismo MINVU. [email protected]

Planning Team from Universidad de Bio-Bio seconded to master plan reconstruction of coastal settlements Dr. Ivan Cartes Siade, Formerly decano de la Facultad de Arquitectura, Construcción y Diseño, Universidad Bio-Bio [email protected] Carolina Arriagada Sickinger, [email protected] Dr. Sergio Baeriswyl, [email protected] Igor Bacigaluppi [email protected] Darwin Diminguez, [email protected] Javier Carrasco Eade, [email protected]

Local authority planners Marissa Macchiavello Goldberg, Arquitecto Asesor SECPTA [email protected] Maria Luz Gejareio Salazar , Arquitecto Asesor SECPTA [email protected] Jose Gonzalez Godoy, Director de Planificacion, SECPLAN, Municipalidad de Arauco [email protected]

Architects and Academics Dr. Rodrigo García Alvarado, Roberto Lira Olmo, Director Laboratorio Estudios Urbanos, Universidad de Bio-Bio Claudio Araneola, Director Magister Didáctica Proyectual Olavo Escorcia Oyolo, Prof Invitado de la Universidad Nacional de Colombia Cristian Bustos Erwenne, PhD student studying coastal settlements, Universidad de Bio-Bio [email protected] Francisco Donoso Tagle, Architect Escuela de Arquitectura, Universidad Diego Portales. [email protected]

Residents of Dichato and Tubul, Arauco. James Dunn Reyes, restaurant El Candil, Dichato. Juan Rivera Carmiolo, Fisherman, Presidente de JJVV, local residents’ association Ingrid Mabel Liviante Alvanado, Committee member JJVV, local residents’ association Patricia Soledad Jaur Muñoz, Committee member JJVV, local residents’ association Margarita Yisti Yana, Committee member JJVV, local residents’ association

Field trip organisation: Guillermo Guzman Dumont, Lecturer Department of Architecture, University of Nottingham, who organized the field trip. [email protected] Ariel Chiang, Architect, Santiago, Chile. [email protected]


CONTENTS Acknowledgements 2 Introduction 4 The Maule Earthquake 5

Damage in Concepción 5 Damage in Talcahuano 7 Damage in Coastal Settlements 9 Tumbes 9 Dichato 10 Tubul 11

Planning process 13 National Plan 13 Coastal settlement planning 14

Use of geospatial technology 19 Information used by coastal planning team 19

Reconstruction 24 Reconstruction of Coastal Settlements 24 Tumbes 24 Dichato 25 Tubul 29 Reconstruction in Concepción and other cities 34

Summary and Conclusions 35 Response to the earthquake 35 Reconstruction in Chile 36 Issues with the existing planning system 36 Problems of missing data and GIS use in Chile 37 Coastal settlement master planning 37 Reconstruction information needs 37

References 40


INTRODUCTION

This is a report of a field trip, 10–18 September 2011, to some of the areas affected by the Maule Chilean earthquake of 27 February 2010 by Stephen Platt of Cambridge Architectural Research Ltd.

In brief, I visited three cities: Concepción, Viña del Mar and Valparaiso, that were subject to earthquake damage and three small coastal settlements, Tumbes, Dichato and Tubul, Region Bio-Bio, that were hit by the subsequent tsunami. I interviewed senior people in the Ministry of Transport and the Ministry of Housing and Urbanism responsible for coordinating national reconstruction, people in Bio-Bio responsible for reconstruction in that region and residents in the coastal settlements.

The field trip took place between 10–18 September 2011, 18 months after the event. I spent five days based in Concepción, from where I visited the city centre, San Pedro, Talcahuano, Hualpén, Coronel, Arauco and the coastal settlements of Caleta de Tumbes, Dichato and Tubul. I spoke to academics, urban master planners, municipal planners and local residents. I spent three days in Santiago and visited Viña del Mar and Valparaiso and spoke to planners and functionaries in the Ministry of Transport and Ministry of Housing and Urbanism.

The trip was part of a follow-on project funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) the main aim of which was to explore the potential for operationalising a method of using satellite imagery analysis to track recovery after major natural disasters.

Aims

The field trip had two main aims: 1 To better understand the process of reconstruction in Chile. 2 To see if the ReBuilDD method of using satellite imagery to monitor and

evaluate reconstruction would be or would have been useful in Chile. This enquiry was guided by three basic questions:

3 How is reconstruction measured and monitored at the moment? 4 Do you think imagery analysis has a part to play? 5 Which indicators and information would be useful?

Study area around Concepción


THE MAULE EARTHQUAKE

The Maule Chile earthquake of 8.8Mw occurred at dawn (3:34am) on the 27 February 2010 at a depth of 35 km (USGS). The event was centred 200 miles southwest of Santiago with a rupture zone of 500-600 km. The earthquake triggered a tsunami whose waves hit the Chilean coast and caused severe damage to many coastal settlements. (Lubkowski et al, 2010) The earthquake affected more than 2 million people, but despite the magnitude of the event, there were few major structural collapses and a relatively low death toll of 500-600. (USGS, 2011) The standard of construction in Chile is generally good. (Booth, 1988)

The earthquake is believed to be the fifth most powerful since seismic measurements began. A comparison of GPS locations from before the event to those 10 days later revealed that Santiago moved about 30cm to the southwest. It even knocked Earth a little off its axis. Nasa calculated the tremors moved the Earth’s axis about 8cm and shortened the length of the day by about one-millionth of a second. (Daily Mail, 2010)

Of the 7,250 highway bridges in Chile just over 200 were damaged and 18 collapsed. (US Dept Transportation, 2011)

Chile offers important lessons in disaster resilience and planning recovery after disasters. (Franco and Siembieda, 2010) This report concentrates on the information needs of planners charged with reconstruction planning in Chile, both at the national and local level.

Damage in Concepción Concepción is the capital of the Biobío Region or Region VIII. With 889,725 inhabitants (2002 census) Gran Concepción (which includes Talcahuano, San Pedro de la Paz, Hualpén, Chiguayante, Penco, Tomé, Lota, Coronel, Hualqui and Concepción) is the second-largest conurbation in the country. Individually, it is the 11th largest commune in the country, with a population of 212,003.

Previous earthquakes and tsunamis razed the town in 1570, 1657, 1687, 1730, 1751, 1822,1835, 1868, 1877, 1906, 1918, 1922, 1937 and 1960. During the1570 earthquake of magnitude 8.3 a delay between the earthquake and the tsunami allowed the population to escape to higher ground and no lives were lost, but every house was destroyed. The 1751 Concepción earthquake was one of the strongest and most destructive recorded quakes in Chilean history. It struck the Central Valley, destroying the cities of Concepción, Chillán, Cauquenes, Curicó and Talca. Concepción was still in the process of recovering from the earthquake and tsunami that completely destroyed the city in 1730. During the earthquake and the subsequent tsunami, all of the buildings in the city of Concepción were destroyed. The records indicate that the earthquake was so intense that "the residents could not remain standing." Fourteen years after the quake the city was relocated to the Valle de la Mocha alongside the Bio-Bio River where Concepción presently lies.

USGS Intensity Map Earthquake 27/2/10


Following the earthquake, geologists relying on global positioning satellite (GPS) data concluded that the city had been displaced roughly 3 meters (10 feet) to the west as a result of the event. Fortunately, the city avoided the tsunami that followed the earthquake.

Collapsed BioBio road bridge, Concepción, built in 1930s. © Reuters

Observations

I walked around the city centre in Concepción and was driven to various sites in Gran Concepción. Everywhere I saw signs of recovery. Shops and restaurants were open in the city centre, the port of Talcahuano was in operation and we had lunch in a restaurant in the fishing village of Tumbes that had been inundated. Of the three bridges across the River Bio-Bio, only the railway bridge survived unscathed. One of the two road bridges collapsed and had been replaced with a temporary metal bridge, nominated the Mecano. The other bridge survived and was in use but the carriageway was distorted.

In the commercial centre where my hotel was located there were still signs of severe earthquake damage to multi-storey buildings. The most notorious collapse, the fifteen-story newly completed residential building, the Alto Río, fell horizontally, trapping many of the residents. This site had just been cleared. The eighteen-storey Torre O’Higgins building pancaked at the 10th

Torre O’Higgins, Concepción, still blocking main avenue 18 months after the earthquake


floor and demolition work was still blocking the main avenue of O’Higgins. Two other tall buildings, the Plaza del Rio and the Centro Mayor had significant damage. The possible causes of these failures have been analysed elsewhere. The majority of the older lower masonry structures seemed to have less obvious major structural damage. Nevertheless in the ancient regional government building in the Plaza de Armas were we met, there was evidence of minor structural damage in the form of plasterwork cracking.

Edificio Alto Rio, Concepción. Newly completed 15 storey block of flats collapsed ©Reuters

Developers may have taken advantage of the relaxation of planning regulations to build luxury apartments on desirable sites that had previously been protected. For example, we saw new apartment blocks under construction in El Venado above San Pedro on a beautiful peninsula on Laguna Grande, one of the best beauty spots in the region.

Damage in Talcahuano Talcahuano is a principal port. The earthquake and tsunami caused extensive damage, especially in the town centre, the naval base and in the barrio of El Arenal and the small fishing ports of El Morro and Tumbes. The tsunami flooded the Canal Ifarle and inundated Villamar, Las Salinas, San Marcos and Vegas Perales. (Robertson, 2010)

The damage to road, rail and port infrastructure caused severe access problems in the days following the disaster. The failure of basic services of drinking water, food, electricity and telecommunication, together with poor communication and a sense of insecurity caused a breakdown in the social order and some looting of supermarkets and shops.

Talcahuano area of inundation. Dark blue tsunami 27 Feb 2010; Light blue tsunami 1835


Observations

We drove around the port and saw clear signs of the immense destruction.

Talcahuano centre ©AP

New social housing was being constructed in the barrios on hills above Talcahuano and informal development of timber shacks on the more difficult steep slopes. One surprising sight was the anarchic demolition of massive four storey steel frame housing complexes. We were told that the structures had been condemned and the authorities were turning a blind-eye to people stealing materials for their own homes. (Muñoz, 2010)

Local residents have local residents social housing above Talcahuano

New anarchic housing on steep slopes above Talcahuano


Damage in Coastal Settlements

Tumbes The village extends along the seafront and up a wooded valley perpendicular to the coast. At the time of my field trip the homes along the coast were in differing states of repair and occupancy. Some looked undamaged whilst all that remained of others was an emergency timber shelter on the concrete slab of the old house. The homes on the steep sides of the valley were obviously undamaged by the tsunami, but the primary school at the mouth of the river had been destroyed and been rebuilt.

Tumbes. Extent of inundation

On the 8 March, just over a week after the tsunami, 2010 Chilean TV reported that Tumbes was left completely destroyed, that the residents had found shelter in tents in the hills in fear of another wave and that the future of the settlements was uncertain. From the video shot at the time it certainly looks like that. But by the time I visited Tumbes eighteen months later it was clear that more than half the homes had survived the wave, the economy was recovering and the school site had been cleared and a new school built.

Tumbes. Damage to homes and the fishing fleet Tumbes: primary school destroyed


Dichato Dichato is a seaside town of 4,046 inhabitants 37 km north of Concepción. It sits at the head of an enclosed bay of calm water suitable for water sports and popular with tourists in summer. The horseshoe bay and the flat estuary make the site vulnerable to tsunami. In total 80% of built structures including 1,343 homes were destroyed by a water column of 6.5m that reached an acceleration of 3.5 meters per second.

Dichato Extent of inundation by tsunami 27/3/2010

Dichato after the wave retreated 27/3/2010


The tsunami came at dawn and, warned by the earthquake, people had time to get to high ground. Much of the damage was caused by ships and solid debris being thrown against buildings. This was compounded by poor quality construction and inadequate structures. The destruction extended upstream of the estuary, affecting various residential sectors. The primary school, police headquarters, fire station were wholly or partially destroyed. Three bridges were destroyed, seriously affecting connectivity and accessibility. (Mackintosh, 2010)

Residents were temporarily relocated in four emergency villages, the largest being "El Molino", with a total of 450 shacks. This location, on high ground above any future tsunami risk represents a real possibility for a future urbanization.

I spent one day with Ivan Cartes1, visiting people in the Municipal planning authority in Tomes, walking around Dichato and talking to a couple of restaurant owners. It was a beautiful sunny day and although it was still early spring one could imagine that this was a very popular resort. There were still many signs of the devastation wrought by the tsunami. Most of the homes within 500 metres of the shoreline had been carried away and all that remained were the sanitary blocks poking out of the rubble and weeds like rotten teeth. Most poignantly, each family had painted their name, address and mobile number in large block letters on the concrete stump.

Bathroom block, all that’s left of the Mendez family home

Tubul Tubul is a small fishing village at the estuary of the River Tubul, 70km south of Concepción, of 2,031 inhabitants at the time of the last census in 2001 (see below). 246 buildings were destroyed, principally by the tsunami. The settlement was founded about 30 years ago by an invasion of poor fishermen and their families. The site is a triangle of flat wetland of about 1km2 bounded by the estuary to the south, the sea to the east and a line of hills to 1 Ivan Cartes, formerly Dean de Faculty of Architecture at the University of Bio-Bio and Head of Coastal Reconstruction Planning for the Regional Government.


the north-west. It was these hills that people climbed in the moonlight to escape the tsunami.

The two sides of the L-shaped settlement, along by the river and along the sea front, form two slightly distinct communities. San Jose, along the river, housed slightly more families than Nueva Esperanza on the sea frontage. San Jose was flooded to a depth of 1-2 metres but over half the homes in Nueva Esperanza were destroyed.

There was a particular problem accessing Tubul because the road bridge from Arauco and the north collapsed when all eight steel girder superstructures became unseated. The main road south was closed, which, together with a landslide meant that relief operations and food supplies had to divert to a dirt road through the coastal mountains.


PLANNING PROCESS

Claudia González in her MSc dissertation at UCL described the urban planning framework in Chile, focusing on how risks and hazards are (or not) taken into account and analysed the shortfalls of the regulations and zonation in the light of the difficulties faced by authorities and practitioners during the reconstruction after the Chaitén Volcano of May 2008 and the Maule Earthquake 2010. (Gonzalez, 2011)

The Chilean Urban Planning Framework, as described by Gonzalez, comprises the General Law of Urbanisation and Construction (LGUC) and its Ordinance (OGUC). This law consists of four hierarchical planning instruments, or types of plan.

− Regional Urban Development Plan − Intercommunal Plan − Communal plan − Plans for specific sectors of cities

These plans are implemented through the application of 14 norms, or regulations, managed through the building control process and the granting of building permits, that cover: land use, plot size, plot occupation and building height.

The planning framework also seeks to define high risk or ‘hazardous’ areas where construction is restricted, but not prohibited. However, the concept of vulnerability to hazards is not well understood by existing planning law, which also does not cover pre-disaster planning for earthquakes or tsunamis. This means that plans already in force fail to adequately address risk from natural hazards such as earthquakes, tsunami and volcanic eruption.

National Plan Pablo Allard, the national coordinator of the urban reconstruction programme sent us a copy of the national reconstruction plan, Plan de Reconstrucción Minvu “Chile Unido Reconstruye Mejor”, which in the English translation is rendered as: “Our Challenge: Turn a Catastrophe into an opportunity… for better cities, better life”. (MINVU, 2010)

The plan defines the scale of the damage: “the earthquake affected severely the second biggest urban area in the country – Grand Concepción – and partially devastated five cities with more than 100.000 inhabitants, 45 cities over 5.000 inhabitants and more than 900 towns and villages on the coast or in rural areas.”

It defines three areas of action: Housing Program for Private Housing Reconstruction Neighbourhood Program for emergency housing, informal housing, and social housing Urban Program for Territorial, Urban, and Heritage Reconstruction

It states that the State is unable reconstruct everything or even control the process of recovery centrally from Santiago. With the support of the state, it is the responsibility of each region, town council and community to develop its own plans. It also states that although the authorities in each locality will be faced with huge problems that they will want to address immediately, it is important that they have a long-term strategic vision and that


they proceed methodically if important issues of cultural identity, the environment and citizen engagement are to be protected and opportunities to build back better realized.

The plan is based on the following premises: 1. Value the existing communities, and local cultural heritage 2. Reconstruct quickly and reconstruct better 2. Protect the local identity of the communities. 4. Respect territorial attachment 5. Mitigate natural hazards 6. Validate strategic and sustainable urban planning 6. Innovate responsibly 7. Legality and formality of the solutions.

Coastal settlement planning As mentioned earlier, responsibility for master planning was passed from the national government in Santiago to local authorities. Almost immediately after the earthquake a group of 10 architects/planners was seconded to the Regional Government to assist the local authorities from the two main universities in Concepción, the Universidad Bio-Bio and Universidad Católica de Chile, and from the Ministerio de Vivienda y Urbanismo, MINVU. Of the 36 coastal settlements in the Region, 18 were severely damaged and the team decided to concentrate their efforts on these. They divided into three teams, costa norte, led by Ivan Cartes, costa centro led by Waldo Martinez and costa sur by Carolina Arriagada. (Cartes, 2011) Each team worked closely both with the planners in the various municipal authorities, with academics and with local residents and business people in the affected settlements to develop a master plan for each

hamlet. The local authorities took a central role in setting budgets and in coordinating the actions of the government ministries, but the exchequer had the final say in approving plans and budget assignments.

This process is called the Plan de Reconstrucción del Borde Costero – PRBC18.

The plan has the following objectives:

Overall: to plan the reconstruction of coastal settlements affected by the earthquake and tsunami ensuring a high quality restoration that is inclusive and integrated.

1. A corrective reconstruction that allows urban recovery agents to be incorporated where none existed before. 2. Inclusive reconstruction that reflects the real aspirations of its residents. 3. A reconstruction that not only improves resilience and promotes the maximum possible safety standard, but also allows coastal urban life to recovery. 4. A sustainable reconstruction that promotes more efficient use of resources and seeks a better relationship with the environment. 5. A reconstruction that strengthens local identity and recognizes and capitalizes on local tangible and intangible cultural heritage. 6. A reconstruction of a diversified economic base that encourages new activities. 7. A reconstruction that coordinates the actions of public and private sectors.


The plan is based on four general principles:

SAFETY: planning for mitigating the level of vulnerability of inhabitants living on the coastal margin and improving the resilience of settlements to cope with a similar event. SUSTAINABILITY: limit occupancy of urban sensitive areas to allow natural systems to recover; implement building systems that provide greater energy efficiency and transport systems that deliver more sustainable urban mobility. QUALITY OF LIFE: stakeholders in each locality identified the factors affecting quality of life and these have been translated into indicators that are reported in each Master Plan. PLATFORM FOR THE FUTURE: each plan should provide conditions that encourage opportunities for growth and economic development and a platform for developing new production and service activities, according to potential of each locality.

Use of indicators measuring the quality of urban life

Considerable thought was given in to developing indicators. These quality of life indicators were organized into 7 areas: urban character, environment, mobility, public spaces, equipment, basic services and employment.

Indicators are defined in the Plan as quantitative data, that correspond to urban variables, and which account for the quality life in a locality. The indicators show the level development of a locality and the welfare of its inhabitants. … first and most foremost they are defined by the priorities of the community but they also include universal indicators that establish parameters for comparison and analysis. Defining indicators can be a tool that represents a picture of the current state of the urban situation. With it, you can observe, measure, compare and track the time, how growth affects quality of life. As a result it should be possible to focus public policy and investment decisions about urban interventions in terms of improved continuous habitat.

The plan involved using a Geographic Information System (GIS) to integrate land cadastral information with 2002 Census data, various ministerial and local authority databases and satellite imagery, as well as manage the data relevant to these indicators for 5 of the largest of the 18 settlements being master planned: Dichato, Penco, Talcahuano, Coronel and Lebu. The software used for processing and analysis includes Arc GIS, Auto CAD, Google Earth, and Excel Redatam.

At a conference I attended on reconstruction in the University of Bio-Bio, Roberto Lira Lomo, Director of the Laboratorio de Estudios Urbanos in that university explained that his unit had done a risk study for coastal settlements. The study period was short, only two months. The immediate problem they had faced was a lack of cartography. They even lacked maps showing access and the location of buildings.

They had modeled the tsunami and tweeked it until it approximated reality. They defined three levels of tsunami hazard: 0–0.5m, 0.5–2m and >2m approximating to 2, 5 and 10 year events. Building vulnerability was also categorized in three levels according to materials of construction reinforced concrete, timber, carton or mud. They had then mapped the risk for 16 communities. In addition they also worked on how to get the economy going quickly, protocols for protecting vital services, plans for managing temporary camps, plans for debris removal and the use of mobile telephones to collect data about damage and needs.

I also attended presentations by PhD students of their theses, one of which was on modeling risk to coastal settlements in Chile. This presentation was by Cristian Bustos Erwenne. The following is a summary of his thesis, in particular his listing of the principles of preparedness and guidelines for planning.

Principles of Preparedness

Principle 1: Know your community’s tsunami risk: hazard, vulnerability and exposure. Principle 2: Avoid new development in tsunami run-up areas to minimize future losses.


Principle 3: Locate and configure new development in tsunami run-up areas to minimize future tsunami losses.

Principle 4: Design and construct new buildings to minimize tsunami damage and, importantly, certify the design and construction of these buildings.

Principle 5: Protect existing development from tsunami losses through redevelopment, retrofit, and land reuse plans and projects.

Principle 6: Take special precautions in locating and designing infrastructure and critical facilities to minimize tsunami damage.

Principle 7: Plan for evacuation.

Guidelines for urban planning post tsunami

1 Land use planning in areas of high risk according to economic capacity of the municipality and private (business, land use, density, functionality and importance of buildings)

2 Registration of existing buildings in high-risk (type and material structure, age and use) 3 Inspection of high-risk facilities 4 Upgrading industrial security systems, incorporating measures protection against a

tsunami 5 Relocate emergency facilities and those essential to the operation of industrial plants to

a height of more than 10 meters above sea level. 6 If the transfer of hazardous facilities in critical areas is unfeasible, necessary

precautions should be taken.

Cristain argued that the key question a country needs to address is whether to rebuild in the same area, taking as many precautions to limit risk as possible, or whether to relocate development to areas of less or no risk. Chile has adopted the former strategy and Japan the latter. (Bustos Erwenne, 2011)

He also described the issues facing tsunami planning in Chile. In April 2011 The Government declared its intent to incorporate tsunami risk mitigation into Chilean urban planning law, but there is little planning experience of how to consider this kind of risk and determine its impact on land use standards and building codes. Current urban planning law does not define minimum building height and materiality and it is impossible to insist that only high concrete buildings are constructed in tsunami run-up areas. Most critical facilities are located in vulnerable areas and it is difficult to move these facilities to safe areas.

There is also no technical certainty that new tsunami housing and proposed mitigation works can withstand large magnitude tsunami and the barriers may only reduce the damage depending on the magnitude of the event. Chile needs to rebuild homes faster than the planning process can keep up with and people have started to rebuild their homes in the same disaster prone areas. The fear factor is not enough to make people move. Socioeconomic factors are critical in location decisions. This, he suggested, might stop the progress of tsunami planning indefinitely.

Meeting with the Regional planning team

I had a meeting in the Regional Government offices in Concepción with five members of the coastal reconstruction group, the PRBC18. They reported that the first thing they had done was to try to gather the data they needed for planning and to assess the scale of the damage. This led them to focus on the 18 settlements most severely damaged. Interestingly all these settlements were exposed to tsunami waves from the north. The next step was the development of an overall reconstruction strategy. This was influenced by North American plans for recovery and mitigation. (FEMA, 2008) (NTHM, 2010)

A major issue facing the planning team was coordinating the efforts of the many agencies involved in reconstruction. It was an immensely complicated process involving many meetings but was eventually successful in getting coordination.


Coordination of national, regional, local public institutions: Local government work was coordinated by the PRBC team at the regional level through the ‘Intendencia’, or President’s representive. The PRBC team coordinated all coastal planning and development through weekly meetings, emails and site visits. The local institutions include the Municipalities, where the Mayor is elected by the community.

PRBC18 Organogram of coastal planning teams showing division into 3 teams: north, central and south

The overall strategy was then applied in each settlement. The master plan involved three distinct types of work. The first involved defining a set of interventions, costing them and securing a budget. The second involved extensive and repeated engagement with residents and local businesses and the third was to coordinate the national, regional and local public institutions – the ministries, municipalities and local associations. Overall the planners attempted to follow the national system as defined in the SNET guidelines (Servicio Nacional de Estudios Territoriales). Initially, there had been resistance from some sectors of the community and from parts of government, but finally by dint of talking they had got consensus.

They were now leaving the planning phase and needed to move to monitoring the reconstruction. But this would involve site supervision and inspection rather than remote sensing.

Issues with the existing planning system and the need for an improved information system

The following comments were provided by Carolina Arriagada, a member of the planning team responsible for master planning the southern section of coastal settlements.


1 One of the biggest problems was that although we designed and coordinated the strategic vision for developing the Master Plan, we had little control over financial decisions. We had to apply to the National Investment System (SNI) as normal.

2 Due to the magnitude of the disaster planners were involved in the emergency phase of disaster management, which delayed the start of the planning phase.

3 All the ministries: Housing, Public Works, National Assets etc. worked with different data and graphics systems and there was no time to coordinate information.

4 The planners faced the disaster with the normal Urban Planning Legislation. There was no political support to change the law to allow a faster rebuild.

5 The ministries had no trained GIS personnel and this lack of expertise was a huge weakness.

6 Masters Plans are not part of Chilean urban legislation. This means that they are indicative rather than normative. To action them Regulation Plans have to be modified in line with the strategy in the master plan. Although the Housing Ministry is in charge of this process, the ‘Contraloría’ or exchequer has the final say in approving plans and this creates problems and delay.

7 People in some of the settlements seem to think that another earthquake will occur within 20 years, so the question is will this strategic planning be a waste of time.

8 As a planning team we know and recognize the importance of information for planning and the need to monitor the process of recovery but to implement change and improvement will require national legislation to create a single information system used by all the relevant authorities and to define a clear established procedure.

9 Finally now is the time to begin working on gathering information and creating a single database with detailed high-resolution imagery for each settlement before a new event, but this needs to be understood by the authorities making the decisions.


USE OF GEOSPATIAL TECHNOLOGY

The following section summarises the use of geospatial technology following the Chile earthquake and identifies information gaps and outstanding questions.

G-MOSAIC Rapid Damage Mapping Concepción 11/3/10 http:// spatial.telespazio.it/gmosaic_chile/

Information used by coastal planning team The PRBC18 coastal reconstruction teams had problems getting reliable data. Although there was some aerial imagery the biggest problem the teams faced was getting access to reliable statistics and cadastral information about damaged properties. Obtaining maps of the settlements prior to the disaster, they said, was fundamental to the planning process. There were no databases of population or of the built environment and no photographs or aerial imagery. Ivan Cartes described how they immediately started to build a GIS database but were overwhelmed by the size of the problem and effectively had to plan without this information and had ultimately to abandon this endeavor. Crowd-sourcing data was discussed and the possibility of training large groups of university students to help with this task, but the team was skeptical about whether there were resources available to coordinate this type of data collection.

Phase 1: Impact Assessment

There was no centralized national system of impact assessment using geospatial technology. Local damage was assessed by each Municipality, overseen by the team for the Reconstrucción del Borde Costero (PRBC18), a department of the regional government. This damage assessment identified 18 affected communities. The results were then aggregated by the Housing Ministry.

The assessment was carried out by a team of young architect volunteers in the month after the earthquake. The results were recorded in Excel. The damage data was not recorded with GPS. The only thing that was recorded with GPS was the extent of the wave.


The results of the impact assessment were used in the first stage of the planning process to quantify the amount of damage to houses, social buildings, roads and industries. Knowing the level of damage allowed the teams to determine the financial support needed for reconstruction and how long the work was likely to take. The number of damaged houses statistic also allowed the team to design appropriate government support programs.

Example of damage assessment Coronel (Population 2002 Census 95,528)

Destroyed Damaged

Houses 980

Health facilities 1 1

Education buildings 1

Police and fire stations 1 1

Phase 2: Planning

Central government departments and regional planners were using different data and graphic systems. There was no time to integrate the systems and no GIS personnel in government. This suggests that Chile could have benefited from the assistance of an external team, such as ReBuilDD, to produce data and tools and to provide training to local planners and government workers.

Data Needs for local planning included:

− enumeration data (census) − cadastral maps − risk maps (tsunami, landslide, liquefaction and flooding) − participatory information − engineer and architectural plans and designs

The following datasets were collected and used in GIS and then AutoCAD.

Aerial imagery (privately acquired) was used to identify different land uses as residential, education, health, etc, and also to identify areas damaged or not damaged by the tsunami

Census 2002 was used to estimate the number of households in each location.

Topographic maps: Digital Geometric Lifting 1:5000 WGS 84 HUSO 18 S (2000) topographic maps were digitised and added to the GIS. These maps contain building footprints and topographic information including land use zones, areas of protection, roads, paths, walls, water bodies, services and elevation contours.


Example of a 1:5000 Topographic map of Chile

Urban plans: The biggest localities like Talcahuano, Dichato, Tirúa, Cobquecura, Penco, Lebu, had Communal Regulation Plan (2000-2005)

Risk mapping

Risk mapping was done by Bio Bio University alongside the Master Planning process. The fact that cadastral and risk maps were not already available led to duplication of effort and slowed the master planning process slightly. Once the Bio Bio study was received the Master Plans were then revised. The information was shared by email between the regional planners and national ministries. Master planning involved at least four processes.

Project design and planning: defining project interventions, costing these and securing a budget using the damage assessments collected by each municipality.

Participation and consultation: there was extensive engagement with residents and local businesses through focus group meetings and face-to-face engagement. Maps were used throughout this process, both to communicate plans to the community and as a tool to collect ideas. The community had problems understanding the maps so images and sketches were also used to communicate and share ideas.

Risk mapping: maps of flooding, tsunami, liquefaction and landslide risk were produced by the National Service of Geology and Mining (SERNAGEOMIN) and Bio Bio University. Combining the risk and topographic maps allowed planners to identify features and facilities at risk and to find suitable relocation points for them. This analysis also defined the locations of coastal defenses, mitigation forest and tsunami-resistant buildings.


Examples of tsunami flood risk maps

Master plans and Zone Maps

The key output from this process were master plans and zone maps. The zone maps show recommended zones for housing (residential), commerce, amenities (scientific, cultural, religious, sport, education, recreation, health, security, service and social service), industries and infrastructure.

Three levels of housing risk were defined based on the wave level.

Level 1: no risk Level 2: low risk. The houses here were made of concrete. Level 3: high risk, Tsunami-resistant housing with an unoccupied ground floor.

Example of Master Plan for Dichato

Phase 3: Implementation and Monitoring

Currently there is neither a national nor local system of monitoring.


Reconstruction is well advanced but the local teams feel that they are still in the recovery phase, with many projects still incomplete or even not yet started. In Dichato, for example 500 families are still not housed and will have to pass the 2012 winter in shelters. Getting projects financed and completed is still a big problem, and the main reason why they are not yet monitoring reconstruction.

Phase 4: Mitigation and pre-disaster mapping

Now is the time to begin gathering information and creating a single database with detailed high-resolution imagery for each settlement before the next event, but it is not clear who will do it.


RECONSTRUCTION

I was taken to Tumbes by Guillermo Guzman and his family and on field trips to Dichato, by Ivan, and to Arauco and Tumbes with Carolina Arriagada. I had the opportunity to see at first hand the principles outlined in the master plans in action in new infrastructure and housing construction and to talk to municipal planners, resident association representatives and local business people. I also talked to planners in various Ministries in Santiago.

Reconstruction of Coastal Settlements

Tumbes In Tumbes, north of Talcahuano, there were plenty of signs of recovery. Along the front there were stalls selling seafood, clothes, CDs and DVDs. Restaurants were back in operation and in the street families had set up wood fueled ovens to bake bread and braziers to cook seafood. There were many brightly painted fishing boats, and we saw groups of fishermen chatting whilst repairing nets. Carpenters were repairing trawlers drawn up the beach. Some families had adapted what remained of their houses incorporating the temporary shelter into an attractive home.

Tumbes. Note the cleared areas at the mouth of the valley for a new school and its head for new housing

Five days after this disaster, Anglo American, a copper mining company, donated US$10 million to provide relief to the people affected by this disaster.

As well as financing the deployment of heavy machinery to remove debris, the company installed six modular schools with the same technology used to build mine camps in Tumbes as well as in Constitución, Quirihue, Yungay and Cocholgüe. Although very utilitarian, the buildings are anti-seismic and are resistant to rain and extreme temperatures. (www.angloamerican-chile.cl/sustainable-development/case-studies/rebuilding-schools-following-the-earthquake.aspx?sc_lang=en)


Original temporary shelter housing a displaced family

Temporary shelter painted and modified

Fishing fleet replaced Fishermen repairing their nets on Sunday

Stall selling mariscos (shellfish) New primary school

Dichato Citizen participation was defined as one of the most important elements of the reconstruction process. Although the planning process was coordinated through the municipality of Tomé, each proposal in the Master Plans was ‘validated’ with the community, neighbourhood leaders and other mover and shakers. Focus Groups were used to explore both the community needs before the earthquake and aspirations and vision for the future and wider public opinion was sought in a survey of residents that received responses from 243 people. Then meetings were held with the various public sector bodies to review the project proposals and agree funding, principally from the


National Investment System. The Master Plan was presented to the community and publicized at various meetings and workshops. This consultation period lasted 7 weeks and the plan was approved at the end of October 2010. (Plan Maestro Dichato, 2010)

The Master Plan was based on strengthening the leading role of tourism, new security measures and replacing housing. The investment Plan has a four-year horizon for the implementation of ‘trigger’ projects. People at the workshops, given the high percentage of buildings destroyed, identified a strong need to recover local identity through using vernacular building materials of wood and stone and mosaic. The socio-cultural identity of spa is based around the arts and culture of summer tourism. The main economic activity is summer tourism, with its demand for accommodation, restaurants and entertainment. There are two main areas of commercial activity and services are next to the waterfront and along Daniel Vera Street. A new promenade or coastal pedestrian/cycleway is being built along the waterfront and Daniel Vera is being converted into a boulevard.

Dichato Master Plan

1 college; 2 park; 3 anti tsunami housing; 4 fishing pier; 5 fish market; 6 housing; 7 bridge; 8 fill; 9 tree planting centre; 10 park; 11 roads; 12 esplanade; 13 cultural centre; 14 fire brigade; 15 boulevard; 16 school; 17 sports centre; 19 bus terminal; 20 police station; 21 canalization; 22 estuary embankment; 23 municipal offices 24 new ring road

Initially commercial activities were re-housed in container units and beach-front restaurants were located in temporary accommodation during the process of expropriation and rebuilding the waterfront promenade. Permanent accommodation for shops and restaurants


is being provided by the Regional Government, the Municipality, the Chamber of Commerce and the Tome Tourism Corporation. Finally a new development in Villarica at the northern end of the resort will provide shared scientific, tourist and fishing accommodation, including a seafood sales area and a small beach market.

Mapping areas of tsunami and flood risk defined three redevelopment areas for three different housing typologies: anti-tsunami housing on stilts in high risk areas; tsunami-resistant reinforced concrete houses in areas of moderate risk and normal Housing Solidarity Fund (FSV) housing in new developments outside risk prone areas. New homes were offered to all victims who qualify ie households whose primary residence was destroyed.

As in other coastal settlements the most vulnerable point is the river estuary. The Plan’s main mitigation proposal is to reduce the acceleration of a destructive wave by constructing a defensive wall in the form of a new promenade, a waterfront park and a forest at the mouth of estuary together with balancing pools to regulate riverine winter floods. The proposals for a promenade, parks and woodland increase the percentage of open space for leisure and recreation tenfold.

Evacuation routes link built up areas to five designated secure areas and a upper level road ensures wider connectivity. The school, nursery, kindergarten and fire station are located on higher ground outside the danger area. It is also planned to update and expand existing wastewater treatment and introduce composting and recycling of solid waste to reduce landfill. Natural wetlands that existed on both banks of the river prior to the tsunami will be restored.

Observations

Work was well advanced on a new bridge over the river and the shopping boulevard. The restaurants were back in operation, most in temporary accommodation set back about 50 metres from the waterfront, rather than on the beach. We went to the main restaurant of the resort in the centre of the bay and had lunch. It was operating in a large temporary structure on the land side of the esplanade. We could see the old devastated restaurant a hundred metres away on the beach side. Ivan had a chat after lunch with the proprietor and made an interesting observation about people’s changing attitudes post tsunami. Initially he said people were traumatized and then grateful for any assistance. They had been actively involved in planning the reconstruction and had agreed the various projects and compensation packages. But now people were getting back on their feet some survivors were getting greedy asking for more and he had to be firm with them.

We talked to James Dunn Bejar, husband of Rosita Reyes, the owner of the famous El Candil restaurant in Caleta Villarrica, Dichato. He invited us up the steps into the new restaurant, built on steel pillars 3m above ground level and showed us photographs of the old restaurant before and after the tsunami. The before image showed an elegant second storey glazed structure with a clock tower. The after image showed only the ground floor framework of massive hardwood timbers. Everything else had been washed away and the surviving structure had been condemned. He said he thought that the structure have survived, but the columns had buckled. He described how they had only minutes to escape, gathering family mementos and leaping into the car. The car, an old Cadillac, was parked on the remaining concrete slab of the destroyed restaurant. He said that the wave and what it did to the buildings was truly impressive: it made you feel insignificant. He showed us photographs of the old restaurant and the damage.


New Candil Restaurant, an L-shape on stilts Restaurant Elena re-sited in temporary premises

Ivan Cartes and Jimmy Dunn discussing plans for Caleta Villarica, Dichato

Redevelopment of main street, Calle Daniel Vera

Ivan filled him in on progress on the various projects and explained the plans for Caleta Villarrica and the triangular peninsula opposite. Ivan said he was sorry for the delay, but things took time and now they had the plans approved and construction was going ahead and everything was going to be fine. Jimmie seemed satisfied with progress and happy with the compensation he’d received. Jimmie and his wife had opted for a prefabricated L-shaped replacement that had arrived on a lorry and been craned into position on top of the steel platform. They had decided not to try and rebuild the old restaurant as another tsunami would take it. He showed us the new kitchen with its large stoves and massive extractor and said that the power supply was still insufficient to run the kitchen. He planned to be back in operation for the summer season. The new restaurant is smaller than the old one but he said they were getting on and this would be fine. About 50m above the new restaurant there was a larger version of one of the standard clap-board emergency homes with a sliding glass patio door and balcony and he said that was were they were living now well above the danger zone. (Desfio Levantamos Chile, 2011)

Later Ivan explained how the planning process had worked. They had had many meetings with people. The main objective had been to get business and commerce up and running. They had read the US manuals on recovery and had learnt that after the immediate relief effort it was important to reinstate livelihoods as quickly as possible, both to take people’s minds off the tragedy and to make them independent of state support. So they had built temporary provisional restaurants set back from the beach and the land designated for tree planning and a park. We visited the large temporary camp on the hillside above Dichato. The homes are one-room 3x6m timber chalets and the camp comprises just over 500 units plus sanitary blocks. Many families appear to be still living here.


Tubul With Carolina Arriagada2 we visited Jose Gonzalez, Planning Director of SecPlan in Arauco and Tubul further south along the coast. It was evident that Jose Gonzalez had worked closely with Carolina developing proposals and master planning the settlements. He described how they had devised data collection they felt necessary for the planning process that involved a survey of the various sectors: housing, fishing, industry, services. They had been collecting data for 15 months and still hadn’t finished, but the master plans were virtually complete. They had used aerial photographs, but these he said were very costly. They particularly need images of immediately before and after the tsunami. I described the ReBuilDD approach. Jose said it would have been “super useful”. This kind of GIS database didn’t exist before the earthquake. They would have used it to document the extent of the damage and to petition for aid and resources.

The Communa of Arauco covers 945km2. Just under half the population of about 100,000 live in Arauco and about 3,500 in Tubul during the fishing season. He described how the immediate problem after the disaster was access, especially to isolated areas, caused by bridge collapse. This meant that connectivity was their first priority, followed by schools. He said that coastal margin trees were essential for tsunami mitigation. Many trees had been killed by salt water from the tsunami and they needed to replant. One problem was that a non-indigenous species of tree has been introduced to Chile, Pinus Radiata known locally as Pino Insigne or Monterey Pine, which tends to kill other trees and much of the under storey, which means there is less of a barrier to waves. I didn’t learn if they were replanting with indigenous species. One plus, in terms of vulnerability, is that the land has risen by 2.5m in Tubul and by 1.5m in Arauco, but this directly affects the economy and quality of life through the river silting up and the consequent loss of the seaweed farm.

2 Carolina Arriagada, Formerly Professor Faculty of Architecture University of Bio-Bio and Member of Coastal Reconstruction Planning Team Regional Government


Tubul before and after the tsunami

In the ‘after’ image below, note the devastation on the seaward side of the settlement, the blue roofs of the emergency housing, the silting of the river estuary and the new building to the west.


Observations

We drove to Tubul and met people from one of the resident associations, the JJVV. We met in the small community centre around a table with a cheerful red and white tablecloth. There were three women and two men. Juan Rivera, the president of the association, described how people had moved to new homes in this part of Tubul, the southern part of the settlement facing the sea, after a fire 14 years earlier.

Jose Gonzalez Godoy, Director de Planificacion, SECPLAN, Municipalidad de Arauco

Although only built in 2006, this home will be replaced with a new house on the landward side of the village

Carolina Arriagada, architect in charge of master planning coastal settlements south of Concepción

Juan Rivera, president of residents association describing the tsunami and its impact.

New tsunami resistant home with reinforced concrete ground floor and timber frame upper.

Unfinished house with exposed super structure


Juan described how most people were asleep when the earthquake struck, causing little damage. “But people knew what to expect and they immediately decamped for the hills behind the village. Many were not dressed properly and it was a cold night. There was a bright moon so we had light to climb by. Between 5-6am we heard the wave. The second wave was 8-9 metres high and took everything. We had heard our parents recount the events of 1960 but the tsunami was so strong I never want to experience anything like that again. Those near the shore lost everything. The village was completely inundated and the roads were full of debris. There was so much destruction. The school was completely destroyed, there were ships in the street and all the equipment – the compressors and outboard motors were lost. The bridge was down and lorries bringing supplies had to go the long way round. Many people couldn’t cope. Some remained strong and had to work for the rest. We set of the association and began working for the community.

We did a walk-through survey with Carolina. People were frightened and desperate; some didn’t want to return. Others, further away from the beach whose homes hadn’t been destroyed, wanted to stay. In 2002 there was a programme to improve the barrio when electricity was installed and our new houses were built in 2006.”

Carolina explained that this place wasn’t safe and people should move to new homes on higher ground at the other end of the village. The Japanese earthquake helped convince the undecided about moving. The Government will expropriate the homes and pay people the commercial value for the house and the improvements they have made, independent of the subsidy for the new housing. The new homes are 114m2, slightly smaller than the existing houses. The residents have been closely involved in the decision making about planning the move and about the design of the homes.

Carolina also explained how the land was owned by a latifundista, or absentee landowner, and that the Government had expropriated part of her property on higher land near the western entrance to the village to re-site the school, fire brigade and police and build new homes for the families at risk

Tubul is heavily dependent on fishing. Juan said people would like Tubul to become popular as a resort since fishermen could sell their fish direct rather than to the fish packing company along the coast that had a monopoly. He had gone to sea at 13 and he didn’t want his children to follow him, but when boys reach 16 they like the idea of earning money and give up study. There are now 15 professionals in the village and the economy is improving. There is a primary school and children go to secondary school in Arauco. (This was also completely destroyed.)

The brackish water of the river has been an important fishery. But the river had silted up with the tsunami and the algae farm had ceased production. The silt was gradually clearing, but the farm was seen as women’s work, while men went out to sea. It wasn’t as dangerous as it had been in the past. Fishermen now have better launches, used weather reports, GPS navigation, wet suits and life jackets. So there are fewer tragedies, but some people continue to over-fill their boats.

Reconstruction

In terms of the planning process, there was a great deal of consultation and many meetings with Carolina and the people from the local authority, but there had been frustration about how long things had taken. Carolina said that the master plan had taken as much as eight months longer because of the lack of good information, especially mapped cadastral information about who lived where. (Plan Maestro Tubul, 2010)

The master plan, shown below details 14 distinct projects and the investment plan details 25 distinct budget headings, ranging from US$4,000 for a police post to US$10million for port infrastructure.


Tubul Master Plan

1 health centre; 2 school; 3 police; 4 fire brigade; 5 wetland park; 6 housing (266); 7 main street; 8 waterfront; 9 info centre; 10 park; 11 cycleway; 12 port infrastructure; 13 new road; 14 evacuation assembly points


Reconstruction in Concepción and other cities I spent 4-5 days in the capital Santiago talking to people in the ministries and visiting various parts of the city and surroundings. I saw little signs of visible damage, but people assured me that it had been severe. I was also taken to Valparaiso and Viña del Mar, where we stayed the night in an apartment block about 100m from the shore. Although the only remaining sign of the earthquake was the sticking balcony door, apparently all the panels in the lift lobbies had blown off. From the balcony I could see much more severe damage to buildings nearly the beach – broken windows, distorted window frames, cracking in the render of the facades. Some of these are being repaired whilst other are due for demolition. Ariel, my host, explained that the sea air was very corrosive and a recent study x-raying the structures had found places were the steel reinforcing had been eaten away. He was especially concerned about the cantilevered balconies, thinking that the steel on the underside might be very close to the surface. In contrast there was little sign of damage in Valparaiso where many homes cling to the precipitous slopes in a most improbable way.

I had hoped to interview Pablo Allard, who had been in charge of the National Reconstruction Plan devised by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Planning and who had recently moved to be Dean of Architecture and Art at the Universidad de Desarrollo in Santiago. Unfortunately, I arrived in Santiago just before Independence Day in Chile and he was away on holiday. I did however, manage to communicate by email and he expressed an interest in our work and the importance of information for planning and the need to monitor the process of recovery.

I visited the Unidad Transporte Sustenable y Urbanismo lead by Professor Marcial Echinque and received a presentation by Cristián Lopez Ugalde on their in four ‘model’ cities – Concepción, Valdivia, Antofagasta and Talea. Essentially the team are deriving a benefit from the earthquake to rethink the transport strategies for four major cities. Their approach is to integrate transport and urban planning to improve the transport system. The delivery method is to use granting concessions to mobilize private finance. (Silva, 2011) This will finance road and bridge building and guided bus systems. They are using traditional urban and transport modeling to validate the new plans. (Mella, 2011)

Proposed plans for Concepción


SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS

Mural of the tsunami on the wall of apartment block in Talcahuano

Response to the earthquake In July 2010 the American Red Cross sent a delegation of 20 multidisciplinary experts on earthquake response and recovery to Chile in order to understand how the Chilean society and relevant organizations responded to the magnitude 8.8 Maule earthquake. USGS (2011) Similarities in building codes, socioeconomic conditions, and broad extent of the strong shaking make the Chilean earthquake a very close analogue to the impact of future great earthquakes on California. The people interviewed included members of President’s Emergency Committee, emergency managers from ONEMI (National Office of Emergency of the Interior Ministry, comparable to FEMA in the USA), structural engineers, a seismologist, hospital administrators and firefighters.

By most standards, the Maule earthquake was a catastrophe for Chile. The economic losses totaled $30 billion USD or 17% of the GDP of the country and twelve million people, or 75% of the population felt strong shaking. Chileans interviewed by the delegation reported being surprised that they were not as ready for this event as they thought they were. Yet only 521 fatalities have been confirmed, with 56 people still missing and presumed dead in the tsunami, and only five engineer-designed buildings were destroyed.

Several factors contributed overall to the low casualty rate and rapid recovery. A major factor was the strong building code in Chile and its comprehensive enforcement. In particular, Chile has a law that holds building owners accountable for losses in a building they build for 10 years. A second factor was the limited number of fires after the earthquake, due to shutting down the electricity grid immediately. Third, in many areas, the local emergency response was very effective. The most effective regions had close coordination between emergency management, fire, and police and were empowered to respond without communication with the capital. The fourth factor was the overall high level of knowledge about earthquakes and tsunamis by much of the population that helped them respond more appropriately after the event.


Reconstruction in Chile The quake and tsunami severely damaged 260,000 homes, 4,000 schools and about 70% of hospitals in the quake-affected area, as well as roads, highways, churches, airports, stadiums, courthouses, electricity and telecommunications networks and military installations.

Within 6 weeks, nearly 60% of public infrastructure damaged by the quake had been repaired, and 11,000 emergency housing units had been built. The government promised to set up 40,000 of these one-room wooden shacks by June 11 for the estimated 800,000 homeless.

The government assessed damages and losses at $30 billion, and estimates total public spending for reconstruction will come to $12 billion. The government will most likely fund this spending through moderate tax increases, reserves, budget reallocations, the sale of assets and, most significantly, through concessionary schemes with the private sector.

According to Claudia Gonzalez the key issues in reconstruction planning are:

Relocation or not. Relocation is generally considered to be a last resort because it is not always possible, principally because of issues of land ownership and tenure.

Timeliness of master planning. However, post disaster planning should be timely to allow but not hinder population and activities recovery. Current framework must be reconsidered to anticipate and accompany urban dynamics. Public participation is often considered to be an obstacle to reconstruction and development but it is necessary.

Reactivating local economies. In general the state is slower than private companies. But the market cannot do everything and state intervention is necessary.

Issues with the existing planning system The Chilean Urban Planning Framework seeks to define high risk or ‘hazardous’ areas where construction is restricted, but not prohibited. However, the concept of vulnerability to hazards is not well understood by existing planning law, which also does not cover pre-disaster planning for earthquakes or tsunamis. This means that plans already in force fail to adequately address risk from natural hazards. (Gonzalez, 2011)

Recently announced changes to planning law will modify the urban planning framework and construction permissions in post-disaster situations to simplify and relax requirements and regulations to speed reconstruction. These proposals suit developers that have argued that de-regulating land use is the best way to allow markets to efficiently assign resources. The question is to what extent is planning necessary to reduce people’s vulnerability and will these changes increase future risk. (Gonzalez, 2012)

Carolina Arriagada, member of Coastal Reconstruction Planning Team, reported that:

1 Planners had little control over financial decisions. The exchequer has the final say in approving plans and this creates delay.

2 There is little or no political support to change urban planning legislation to allow a faster rebuild.

3 The ministries and regional governments worked with different data and graphics systems and there was no time to coordinate information.

4 The ministries had no trained GIS personnel.

5 Planners recognize the importance of the information and the need to monitor but change will require national legislation.

6 Now is the time to begin gathering information and creating a single database with detailed high-resolution imagery for each settlement before the next event, but it is not clear who will do it.


Problems of missing data and GIS use in Chile Damage Assessment: There was no up-to-date information, including numbers of damaged and destroyed buildings at the beginning of the reconstruction process. The information was always changing and the planners lacked the skills or resources required to maintain a suitable GIS database.

Cadastral Data: There is no up-to-date systematic cadastral survey of buildings in Chile. The PRBC18 planning teams were obliged to use cadastral surveys by University of Bio BIo and the Ministry of Housing dating from 2000. These were in a GIS and were added to Autocad

Data associated with the polygons in these maps including construction material, number of floors, and, in some cases, date of construction. But this detailed information was incomplete and of variable reliability. With better data and more expertise, this layer could have provided a base for the GIS database.

The authorities decided to plan without this cadastral information. This led to some duplication of effort, but the master planning was completed within 10 months.

The team planned to use GIS to store and analyse 1) cadastral data 2) census information 3) national and local government data and 4) satellite imagery. However, they were unable to obtain cadastral and enumeration datasets. There were neither maps of the settlements prior to the disaster nor population data.

The team started to build a GIS but were overwhelmed by the size of the problem, particularly because there were no trained GIS staff on the team or available for secondment. In particular, the team failed to keep up with changing situation on the ground or get the right information at the right time to aid decision making. The team were also skeptical about using crowd-sourcing because of lack of resources to coordinate the process and achieve sufficient confidence in the consistency and reliability of the data.

The main problem in Chile appears to have been the difficulty of updating post-disaster datasets to represent the dynamic changing situation. This requires protocols to be in place before the event and an experienced team leading the data collection.

Coastal settlement master planning The Master Planning of the 18 coastal settlements was completed by December 2010, only 10 months after the earthquake and reconstruction is well advanced.

The key measures in both Dichato, Tubul and, presumably, in the 16 other settlements include re-establishing economic activity, moving key public services and some housing to safer locations, building tsunami resistant housing in risk prone areas and mitigating the effect of future tsunamis through retaining walls and forest planting. Overall this represents a significant improvement in the quality and resistance of these settlements. There are however, many other settlements along the Chilean coast that were not badly affected by this event but remain vulnerable to future events.

Reconstruction information needs In simplistic terms, two types of information are needed after a major disaster. Immediately after the event there is a need for information about damage to buildings, roads and bridges and about the level of relief and shelter required. This information is needed to make decisions about rebuilding or relocating infrastructure and buildings and about providing support and compensation to families and businesses. Almost simultaneously teams of people begin planning the process of recovery at an urban scale and they need a different type of aggregate information about all aspects of the places affected.

In reality these are two types of need rather than two distinct types of information, since, theoretically, the information could be derived from the same data. In reality, for practical reasons of timing, they may have to be distinct. They key issue is how quickly can


information of either type be provided. Information, particularly in the form of maps, aerial imagery and photographs of both immediately before and after the event is a first requirement. Ideally there would also be base line socio-economic information about the community and cadastral information. In practice, in many countries at risk from natural disaster, this base-line data is not available.

Master planning process - information from remote sensing perceived as being most useful in Phase A

This is the issue that the ReBuilDD approach tries to address, using satellite images augmented by a limited amount of physical and household ground surveys, to measure a comprehensive set of indicators covering all aspects of recovery. The aim is to create a GIS database in sufficient detail to meet the needs of the team master planning the reconstruction at an urban scale. Fundamental needs include land use and building stock maps. The key question for ReBuilDD is how can statistical techniques be used to guide this data collection to build a GIS database in the most effective and speedy manner possible.

The Chilean team working on Coastal Settlement reconstruction had tried and failed to build this database in time to be really useful to the master planning process. On the one hand master planners would like detailed information at an individual plot scale, but they can, and have to, make design decisions based on much sketchier aggregate information and local knowledge. In practice most countries facing the impacts of a major disaster will lack the time and resources to build a systematic database. The key is to define the minimum needs and to be prepared in advance of an event.

When asked what information they needed to plan, the Chilean master planning team were unable to be specific. They did not make a distinction between these two information needs, perhaps because they were involved with all aspects of recovery, from urban master planning through to individual compensation claims. They were clear that they


needed information about all aspects of recovery covered by the ReBuilDD indicator set. What we did not manage to discuss was how sampling, approximation and estimation might have been used effectively to reduce data collection to manageable proportions. This is an area that requires further research.

How is reconstruction measured and monitored at the moment?

Insufficient attention seems to have been given to measuring and monitoring reconstruction. The master planning teams recognized the importance of monitoring, but in terms of priorities they had more important tasks. Eighteen months on these teams are now disbanding and returning to their academic posts or new challenges.

There are plans to implement a national system of monitoring but it is not clear if sufficient resources wil l be allocated to the task or if this new body wil l get important feedback from the planners about information needs. There are so many agencies and professionals involved in reconstruction that it seems almost impossible to coordinate their information needs into a single national system.

What part can imagery analysis play?

At the time of my visit, eighteen months after the disaster, Chile was coming to the end of the planning phase and reconstruction phase. Detailed high-resolution imagery of each settlement before and after the tsunami would have been invaluable and a GIS based on the indicators identified by ReBuilDD would have been useful for planning purposes. In practice much of the master planning proceeded with inadequate mapped information, but a high degree of local knowledge and community involvement. In some ways this was no bad thing. This kind of close to the ground decision-making has considerable merit. Architects developing plans through dialogue with local people perhaps stands a greater chance of inspiring people to rebuild their l ives and communities than a more information based technocratic approach.

The planners, however, recognize the importance of monitoring. But they see it in a slightly different way than the way ReBuilDD had envisaged. They highlighted that they now need to begin the monitoring and evaluation phase in which inspectors would visit each project and assess the quality of reconstruction. This again involves trained personnel working close to the ground.

Which indicators and information would be useful?

For planning purposes the most useful data would have been GIS coded cadastral information and up to date maps. In terms of monitoring and evaluation all the ReBuilDD indicators would be useful. But imagery analysis would not replace the need for site inspection.

Key issue

They key issue for ReBuilDD is how quickly can information of either type be provided. Information, particularly in the form of maps, aerial imagery and photographs of both immediately before and after the event.

This is the issue that the ReBuilDD is currently attempting to address.


REFERENCES

Bonnefoy P. (2010) Earthquake reconstruction. 2010 07:30 Updated May 30, 2010 13:281 www.globalpost.com/dispatch/chile/100412/earthquake-reconstruction-pinera April 14

Booth E and Taylor CA. (1988) The Chilean earthquake of 3 March 1985. A Field report by EEFIT Ove Arup and Bristol University June 1988

Boston Globe (2010) Chile, nine days later. www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/03/chile_nine_days_later.html

Bustos Erwenne, C. (2011) Methodology for urban planning of coastal settlements with rsik of tsunami based in modeling of future scenes. PhD Thesis outline. [email protected]

Cartes, I (2011) The reconstruction process of coastal cities in the north of the Biobio region: sustainability, participation and resilience. Department of Planning and Urban Design, Universidad del Bío-Bío, Chile. Unpublished paper.

Daily Mail (2010) www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1256597/Chile-earthquake-moved-Concepcion-city-10ft-west.html#ixzz1cC6SvImH.

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Documents

SP Chile Field Trip 8 - CARLtd Platt Reconstruction... · Margarita Yisti Yana, Committee member JJVV, local residents’ association Field trip organisation: ... This is a report