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High-profile earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, hurricanes and other natural disasters have made it more clear than ever that in the face of climate change, stronger buildings able to withstand such events are not just advisable but necessary. These 13 designs range from fantastical concepts for entire floating cities to real homes that have already proven themselves disaster-proof, and from large-scale billion-dollar projects to low-cost housing solutions for the poor.

Earthquake-Proof 'Coral Reef Island' for Haiti

After 2009's massive earthquake wiped out much of Haiti's infrastructure, the nation is still struggling to rebuild, and imaginative architect Vincent Callebaut has a suggestion: disaster-proof floating housing inspired by coral reefs. The Coral Reef Project consists of 1000 modular residences in dual wavy stacks, supported on an artificial pier built on seismic piles in the Caribbean. With energy harvested from the waves, hydro-turbines and sea thermal energy conversion, the structure improves the standard of living, providing green terraces for each plug-in 'pod' and simplifying delivery of supplies.

Soccer Ball-Shaped Floating Houses

From a doghouse to a 540-square-foot family dwelling, the 'Barier' is an earthquake-proof home shaped like a soccer ball that becomes a floating rescue ship in the event of a natural disaster. The 32-sided urethane-walled surface of the house distributes force, and the base acts as a ballast, ensuring that it stays upright if swept away in a tsunami.

Noah's Ark - A Floating Hotel

In the event of an earthquake or flood, this hotel would be one of the safest buildings in town. The concept, designed by Remistudio, is structured to resist seismic impact and has an entirely transparent facade to create a biosphere that could allow food production if necessary. Solar panels and rainwater collection would provide inhabitants with energy and water and the bottom half of the hotel rests in a depression in the ground, allowing it to come loose and float.

Earthquake-Proof Solar-Powered Volcano Towers

(images via: ofis)

Looking like a strange sort of man-made volcano, the All-Seasons Tent Tower by OFIS Architecture is a multi-function cylindrical tower powered with solar energy and covered in a mesh skin that filters sunlight for temperature regulation. A system of concrete cores protects the interior - filled with apartments, shops, restaurants, offices and recreational space - from the impact of earthquakes.

Harvest City: Floating Concept for Haiti

Yet another natural disaster-proof concept takes Haiti from the land to the sea, creating an offshore haven complete with agriculture and industry. Harvest City by E. Keven Schopfer is a complex of floating modules measuring 2 miles in diameter, with four zones connected by a linear system of canals. Cables secure the whole complex, which includes a harbor 'city center', to the sea bed. The design even makes use of debris from the 2009 earthquake, putting concrete rubble to work as breakwater filler.

Sticky Rice Mortar in China

Ancient Chinese construction workers found a secret recipe for mortar that has helped their buildings survive for centuries: it's made with sticky rice. Chemists determined in 2010 that a complex carbohydrate in the 'sticky rice soup' which was mixed with lime and used to fill in gaps between stones over 1500 years ago is largely responsible for the strength of the structures, which have withstood multiple earthquakes and even bulldozers.

"Analytical study shows that the ancient masonry mortar is a kind of special organic-inorganic composite material," the scientists explained. "The inorganic component is calcium carbonate, and the organic component is amylopectin, which comes from the sticky rice soup added to the mortar. Moreover, we found that amylopectin in the mortar acted as an inhibitor: The growth of the calcium carbonate crystal was controlled, and a compact microstructure was produced, which should be the cause of the good performance of this kind of organic-organic mortar."

Floating Shipping Container Houses for Pakistan

Millions of people remain homeless in Pakistan after disastrous 2010 floods - could low-cost, eco-friendly shipping container houses be the solution? The Amphibious Container concept by Richard Moreta is made with reused shipping crates and pallets, resting on a foundation of truck inner tubes which serve as a flotation device in the event of high waters. It can handle a maximum water level of 7.5 feet.

Lilypad Floating City Concept

Floating mega-cities are Vincent Callebaut's specialty, and the Lilypad Floating Ecopolis is an especially beautiful example of imagination run wild. Designed for "ecological refugees" in the year 2100, the Lilypad is an amphibious self-sufficient city able to accommodate 50,000 people along with enough plants and animals to sustain them. The lower portion includes a submerged lagoon which filters rainwater.

Low-Income Disaster-Proof Bamboo Housing

What if we could keep all of a home's key elements in a disaster-proof core, surrounded by a bamboo structure that would be inexpensive to replace if a natural disaster destroyed it? That's the idea behind this low-income housing concept by a group of Indian architects, a design that won the Design Against the Elements competition to create disaster-proof housing. Each three-story apartment complex contains an earthquake, wind and water-resistant core holding water and power lines, bathrooms, kitchens and stairways and an escape hatch to the roof. This provides a safe haven for a low cost, raising survival rates among the most vulnerable populations.

Hurricane-Proof Dome House in Florida

There are lots of cool concepts, but what about disaster-proof homes that have already been built and proven effective? This unusual-looking dome house in Pensacola Beach, Florida has survived four hurricanes including the devastating Katrina, Dennis and Ivan. Owners Mark and Valerie Sigler came up with this $7 million design after Hurricane Opal destroyed their previous house in 1995, leaving them without a residence for 14 months. During Hurricane Dennis in 2004, an NBC News crew stayed in the house and had this to say about it: "You have a one-piece concrete house with five miles of steel in it. The house did exactly what it's supposed to do."

Raised Home Escapes Hurricanes, Brush Fires & Floods

The owners of this raised house, located on an island off the coast of South Carolina, were determined that their home be able to survive brush fires, hurricanes and floods. The resulting off-grid pre-fabricated house made of recycled steel and SIP panels is engineered to FEMA flood zone requirements and built on helical foundations to withstand 140-mile-per-hour winds. All that space under the house isn't wasted - in fair weather, it functions as a screened-in shade porch.

The Citadel: Floating Apartment Complex in the Netherlands

Not content to simply talk about the dangers of rising sea levels (like much of the rest of the world), the Dutch have begun taking matters into their own hands with architecture that can withstand dramatic changes in the canals that are such an integral part of the Netherlands. As part of a new development called "New Water", Koen Oltuls of Waterstudio designed 'The Citadel', Europe's first floating apartment complex. 60 luxury apartments, a car park, a floating road and boat docks will work with the changing water levels rather than against them

Foundation (9 Boxes): Absurdist Architecture by Luke O'Sullivan

Technically, this isn't an architecture concept; it's a work of art - screenprint on wood by Luke O'Sullivan. But Foundation (9 Boxes) still offers an absurdist take on solutions to flood-proof housing, and one that makes a very simple point: build higher.

Says the artist, "'Foundation (9 Boxes)' was inspired by dystopian films, absurd architectural concepts, and natural disaster prevention. It was around the time when the housing market crashed, and I was thinking a lot about modular housing units, and façades."

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Disaster-Proof Architecture: 13 Super-Strong Structures - WebEcoist

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High-profile earthquakes, tsunamis, floods, hurricanes and other natural disasters have made it more clear than ever that in the face of climate change, stronger buildings able to withstand such events are not just advisable but necessary. These 13 designs range from fantastical concepts for entire floating cities to

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With govt giving a clear push to city infrastructure, it would make sense to build transport, water, sanitation and power infrastructure with optimum physical resilience.

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Around 10,000 lives were lost, houses and city infrastructure got destroyed across Nepal and Northern part of India in the earthquake in April this year. This came as a reminder to Indians, especially those living in high rise urban dwellings in the northern part of the country, that their habitation falls in either of the siesmic zones 3,4 or 5 with zone 5 being most prone to earthquakes.

According to the Government of India, at least 38 cities lie in high-risk seismic zones and almost 60 per cent of the landmass of the subcontinent is immensely vulnerable to earthquakes or other natural disasters. The fact that a large section of the population is poor and lives in houses and cities that are hastily built and are not earthquake resistance raises the risk of human impact, in case of any disaster. Also, the lack of government's preparedness to deal with such situations may add to the woes.

While the Indian government has embarked upon building urban infrastructure across the country and develop 100 smart cities over the coming years, it is important that cities and infrastructure being built take into account the topography and vulnerability of the area to various hazards.

A report prepared by the World Bank on urbanisation in South Asia states that while the risks are high and growing on account of rising population density in urban areas, government's need to plan more resilient cities and policy makers need to plan holistically to deal with any situation. The report enlists four recommendations that policy makers of a country need to take into account.

* Identify risk by using urban risk assessment framework
* Mitigate risk by planning critical and multipurpose safe and resilient infrastructure
* Develop a risk financing scheme to provide immediate liquidity in the aftermath of disasters and to build financial resilience
* Build strong institutions and collect, share, and distribute disaster data.
Rising urbanisation and growing risk
Urban population in South Asia has increased 130 million since the turn of the century and between 2011 and 2030, over 300 million inhabitants are expected to get added to urban population.

Importantly, most of the migration and rise in urban population has largely been unplanned and has resulted into concentration of the poor population in risk-prone areas, thereby increasing their exposure to natural disasters.

Concentration of population in urban areas has increased the risk exposure in South Asia to natural hazards in risk-prone areas such as deltas, floodplains, coasts, and the Himalayan belt. The report points that in South Asia, the number of people exposed to natural hazards is growing by 3.5 per cent a year.

World bank states that while these countries have strengthened their institutions to mitigate problems of natural hazards, these institutions have not been allowed to influence overall planning and development.
Urban risks and exposure
According to the report 80 per cent of major South Asian cities are exposed to floods, with about 45 per cent falling in flood-prone areas and 14 per cent in extremely flood-prone areas. It also suggests that as much as half of all future urban expansion could be in flood-prone areas. Other than this, cities in Afghanistan, Nepal, Pakistan, and northern India that lie along the Himalayan range are all at risk of earthquakes. Many cities in northern India and Pakistan are also at risk of heavy inland flooding. This underlines the need for anticipatory planning and steps to mitigate risk.

The report points that policymakers should focus their DRM efforts on highly vulnerable large cities with high present and future risk.

While South Asian countries' response to disasters so far has been reactive, some have begun planning to increase their resilience and reduce negative impacts of disasters, including integrating DRM in their national planning frameworks. The need is to have spatial planning and creation of formal land and housing markets that leads to urban resilience by limiting unplanned development.
Identifying and mitigating risk
The first step in developing a resilience strategy is to identify risks at national and city level. It is also important to identify the vulnerabilities of communities and potential exposure to disasters. Urban risk assessments aim to identify critical infrastructure and develop early warning systems.

Mitigating risks call for developing both structural and nonstructural measures. While structural measures include dams, wave barriers and retrofitting of buildings etc, the nonstructural measures comprise policies and laws, practices, and agreements such as building codes, land-use planning, public awareness and information.

With Indian government embarking upon developing infrastructure across cities, it would make sense to build transport, water, sanitation and power infrastructure with optimum physical resilience and not overlook them to save on marginal costs.

Also, since many cities are densely populated, it is not realistic to relocate millions of people away from their homes and jobs and so, "Cities can revisit urban design and ensure enforcement of building codes and land-use plans to minimise or prevent further building in risk-prone areas and to reinforce structures so that they are resilient to various hazards," said the World Bank report.

Substandard construction practices have to be stopped, city authorities have to provide incentive for enforcing building codes as it would reduce post-disaster cost.

The report states that that the problem in South Asia is that it lacks empowerment of city leaders. "City leaders should, in planning to fill the huge infrastructure gap, consider future risks and hazards, and ensure that the new infrastructure is not built in hazard-prone areas and does not expose communities to additional risks," said the report.
Financing the risk
Governments and local authorities need to build finances to respond post disaster.

An advance financing plan should include reserves, calamity funds, budget contingencies, a contingent debt facility and risk transfer mechanisms. While having insurance, reinsurance and parametric insurance is important, alternative risk transfer instruments include catastrophe bonds.

While low and medium risk incidents can be financed through contingent budgets, reserves, and annual budget allocations, "High-risk layer (major disasters) have to be paired with catastrophic risk transfers such as parametric insurance and catastrophe bonds," the report pointed out. A detailed risk assessment is necessary for designing a national catastrophe risk strategy. While several South Asian countries have developed financing programs for disasters, the most extensive risk financing is in Sri Lanka. It is the first country to develop a "catastrophe draw down option" with assistance from the World Bank through a development policy loan. "The loan provides a line of credit that can be drawn on partially or in full if the country d clares a state of emergency after a natural disaster."

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Around 10,000 lives were lost, houses and city infrastructure got destroyed across Nepal and Northern part of India in the earthquake in April this year. This came as a reminder to Indians, especially those living in high rise urban dwellings in the northern part of the country, that their habitation falls in either of the siesmic zones 3,4 or 5 with zone 5 being most prone to earthquakes.