Sustainable refugee camp design in the Dalhamyie settlement (Bekaa, Lebanon) for climate change context

Abstract

Emergency shelters are often designed to be of temporary nature but end up adopting a more permanent nature in becoming informal settlements. On one hand, these settlements suffer from the conflicts and environmental pressures. On the other hand, they also bear the inadequacies of services and facilities. This adds to the vulnerability of the refugee population to climatic extremes and environmental extremes along with a low quality of life. The present study aims to identify the pressures both environmental and socio-economic on a refugee camp in the Dalhamyie settlement in Bekaa, Lebanon and design a resilient model which address both internal and external risks. We propose a master plan as a suggested guideline representing a preliminary design umbrella plan that may be updated and altered depending on the population of the community, the site's limitations, and the general availability of resources. To help the local refugees become more resilient and self-sufficient in times of crisis, recommendations are here presented are not strict structural plans but rather a strategic, data-driven collection of actions. With the increasing mental stress that refugees experience, the idea of resilience at all levels is needed to lessen and reinforce the constant environmental, physical, and economic threat that they are subjected to. Residential zoning has been detailed out with respect to the form, structure and assembling of components along with cluster planning within the settlement. Recommendations are not a rigid structural plan but a strategic, data driven set of actions that can be implemented by the local refugee community in order to achieve greater resilience and self-sustainability during crisis situations. Such model is applicable with modifications for other emergency settlements also with varying risk factors. The proposed model addresses the challenges and the multiple risks that the people are exposed to present a framework that can lead to better quality of life in temporary settlements. With more climate refugees, conflict driven refugees and internal refugees, absence of such models was a gap and the authors have tried to build the same through one case study.