The construction and style of houses vary greatly from country to country. This is due mainly to a combination of the materials available locally and the type of weather that the region experiences.
The majority of the population in developing countries lives in buildings that can be considered as non-engineered, which unfortunately are often susceptible to many natural disasters, especially earthquake. As the construction techniques/practices and skill of masons/carpenters differs from country to country, strength of non-engineered constructions differ as well. A research was conducted jointly in seven selected developing countries, i.e. Egypt, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, Peru, and Turkey, to collect data on their design and construction characteristics and information related to the local context. All of the countries have certain code or, at least, guidelines on building construction, which however do not seem to affect field practices. While construction practices are different from country to country, most of them have some similarities on certain parameters, such as design intervention, availability of materials and workers, supervision by the owner, construction tools, foundation types, wall thickness, type of plaster/mortar/concrete, workers’ training, etc.
The majority of the population in developing countries lives in buildings that can be considered as non-engineered buildings, i.e. buildings and houses built in a traditional way without or with minimum engineering intervention from an architect or structural engineer in the design and construction process. In general, masonry and wooden structures are commonly found in this category of structure (IAEE, 1986) (Kusumastuti et al., 2008). Unfortunately, this type of building is often susceptible to many natural disasters, especially earthquake. Past earthquakes revealed that the damage on non-engineered houses is responsible for the deaths of most of the total casualties in earthquakes (Narafu et al., 2010) (Macabuag, 2008) (Grundy, 2007). As construction techniques/practices and skill of masons differ from country to country, strength of non-engineered construction differ as well. However, there is little knowledge about the comparative strength in various developing countries.
This research was conducted jointly in seven selected developing countries, i.e. Egypt, India, Indonesia, Nepal, Pakistan, Peru and Turkey, involving survey of construction of non-engineered buildings in various sites in each country to collect data on their design and construction characteristics and information related to the local context.
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