A New Method for Assessing the Vulnerability of Eastern Caribbean Buildings to Natural Disasters Using Remote Sensing

Student Paper. The threat from a changing climate to the Caribbean is likely to exacerbate already existing vulnerabilities in the built environment. Building Codes are generally regarded as powerful regularity tools for increasing people’s safety and resilience in housing but are not always adhered to in countries in the Eastern Caribbean, where resources and technical training are often scarce. The research project partly documented in this paper is part of the first author’s Professional Doctorate in Sustainable Built Environment, which proposes to mitigate this lack of adherence to Building Codes in lower-income housing in Antigua and Barbuda, part of the Leeward Islands, Eastern Caribbean, by the development, implementation, and testing of a protocol that it is hoped will facilitate compliance with Building Code standards already developed in the country. This could enhance resilience from the challenges posed by climate change. As a key part of this project, this paper proposes a new method for assessing the vulnerability of the existing housing stock in Antigua and Barbuda to tropical cyclones (TCs), identifying the ways in which the built environment in the region does not conform to Building Codes in the country, and thus informing the subsequent development of the research project’s protocol.