QSAND (Quantifying Sustainability in the Aftermath of Natural Disasters)
- Project timeframe
- Ongoing
- Theme
- Successful Transitions Under Environmental Change
- Amount awarded
- n/a
- Funder ID
- IFRC, BRE Trust
Project leader: George Foden
QSAND is a sustainability self-assessment framework that aims to inform and monitor post-disaster reconstruction activities. It was developed to support the drive in the humanitarian sector to consider and benchmark sustainable approaches to shelter and settlement operations after disasters.
QSAND takes a wide variety of factors which impact the disaster recovery process into account and promotes a holistic sustainability approach to address the context. It has been used by humanitarian shelter and settlement practitioners in housing recovery projects around the world, and now sits within the STEER (Sustainable Transitions: Energy, Environment, and Resilience) research centre at Loughborough.
A research group around the areas of housing, energy, and community resilience in humanitarian contexts is growing around QSAND, with input from practitioners in the Global Shelter Cluster and academic partners in Malawi, Nepal, China, the US, and the UK. Key research areas include shelter and social cohesion, sustainability scorecard approaches to shelter action, energy considerations in housing practice, and community resilience in post-disaster contexts.