Glossary

A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P, Q-R, S, T, U-W, X, Y, Z

Accountability: The state of being accountable; liability to be called on to render an account. Adaptation: The adjustment in natural or human systems in response to actual or expected climatic or other stimuli or their effects, which moderates harm or exploits beneficial opportunities.

Adobe: Compressed earth, normally in the form of bricks or blocks.

Agency-driven reconstruction in relocated site (ADRRS): An agency-led approach in which an agency contracts the construction of houses on a new site, generally with little or no involvement with the community or homeowners.

Agency-driven reconstruction in situ (ADRIS): An agency-led reconstruction approach in which damaged houses are rebuilt, generally by a construction company, in pre-disaster locations.

All-hazards risk analysis: A determination of the nature and extent of risk developed by analyzing all potential hazards and evaluating existing conditions of vulnerability that could pose a potential threat or harm to people, property, livelihoods, and the environment on which they depend.

Apartment owner-occupant: The transitional reconstruction option in which the occupant owns his or her apartment, formally or informally.

Apartment tenant: The transitional reconstruction option in which the occupant rents the apartment, formally or informally.

Assessment: The survey of a real or potential disaster to estimate the actual or expected damages and to make recommendations for prevention, preparedness, response, and reconstruction.

Assistance scheme: A method for providing assistance to households after a disaster, allowing them to rebuild and to reestablish their way of life, which may include cash transfers, vouchers, and/or in-kind contributions.

Audit: An official examination and verification of accounts and records to analyze the legality and regularity of project expenditures and income, in accordance with laws, regulations, and contracts, such as loan contracts and accounting rules. May also analyze efficiency and effectiveness of use of funds.

Baseline data: The initial information collected during an assessment, including facts, numbers, and descriptions that permit comparison with the situation that existed before and measurement of the impact of the project implemented.

Basic needs: The items that people need to survive. This can include safe access to essential goods and services such as food, water, shelter, clothing, health care, sanitation, and education.

Biological disaster: Disaster event caused by the exposure of living organisms to germs and toxic substances.

Bribery: Offering an inducement for a person to act dishonestly in relation to a business opportunity.

Build Back Better: Approach to reconstruction that aims to reduce vulnerability and improve living conditions, while also promoting a more effective reconstruction process.

Building code: A set of ordinances or regulations and associated standards intended to control aspects of the design, construction, materials, alteration, and occupancy of structures necessary to ensure human safety and welfare, including resistance to collapse, damage, and fire.

Building inspection: Inspections necessary to establish whether a damaged structure poses an immediate threat to life, public health, or safety, usually accompanied by a process of tagging.

Bunga houses: Structures built with compressed stabilized earth blocks.

Capacity: The combination of all physical, institutional, social, and/or economic strengths, attributes, and resources available within a community, society, or organization that can be used to achieve agreed-upon goals. Also includes collective attributes such as leadership and management.

Cash approach (CA): Unconditional financial assistance for housing reconstruction without technical support.

Cash transfers: Direct payments or vouchers to provide resources to affected populations to carry out housing reconstruction, in exchange for work on infrastructure projects, or for other purposes.

Catastrophe: A situation in which all or most people living in a community are affected along with the basic supply centers, making self-help impossible.


Civil society organization (CSO): National and local nongovernmental and not-for-profit organizations that express the interests and values of their members and/or others based on ethical, cultural, political, scientific, religious, or philanthropic considerations.

Climate change: Meteorological changes attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alter the composition of the global atmosphere or to natural climate variability.

Climatological disaster: Disaster event caused by long-lived/meso- to macro-scale processes (in the spectrum from intraseasonal to multi-decadal climate variability).

Collusion: Cooperation between two or more parties to defraud or deceive a third party, usually with an anti-competitive purpose.

Community: A group of households that identify themselves in some way as having a common interest, bond, values, resources, or needs as well as physical space. A social group of any size whose members reside in a specific locality, share government, and often have a common cultural and historical heritage.

Community participation: A process whereby stakeholders can influence development by contributing to project design, influencing public choices, and holding public institutions accountable for the goods and services they provide; the engagement of affected populations in the project cycle (assessment, design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation).

Community-based organizations (CBOs): Organizations whose principal concerns are the welfare and development of a particular community. CBOs may not represent all the households in a particular area.

Community-driven reconstruction (CDR): Approach to reconstruction that entails varying degrees of organized community involvement in the project cycle, generally complemented by the assistance of an agency that provides construction materials, financial assistance, and/or training.

Complaint mechanisms: Mechanisms that allow corruption to be reported by social actors, including public employees, ideally in a confidential manner.

Complex disasters: Multidimensional events of long duration often spawned by human-generated events, such as war and civil strife.

Conditional cash transfer: Cash given on the condition that the recipient does something (for example, rebuild a house, attend school, plant seeds, provide labor, or establish or reestablish a livelihood).

Conservation: Actions taken to secure the survival or preservation of buildings, cultural artifacts, natural resources, energy, or any other thing of acknowledged value to society.

Construction guidelines or standards: A document prepared by a recognized standard-setting organization that prescribes methods and materials for the safe use and consistent performance of specific technologies; sometimes developed by consensus of users.

Construction technology: The choice of building materials and the technique and means used to erect or repair a house.

Contingency planning: A management process that identifies and analyses potential events or situations that might threaten the society or the environment and establishes arrangements in advance to enable timely, effective, and appropriate responses to and recovery from any such events and situations.

Coping capacity: The manner in which people and organizations use existing resources to achieve various beneficial ends during unusual, abnormal, and adverse conditions of a disaster phenomenon or process.

Corruption: The misuse of an entrusted position for private gain by employing bribery, extortion, fraud, deception, collusion, and money-laundering, including gains accruing to a person’s family members, political party, or institutions in which the person has an interest.

Critical services: Services required to be maintained in the event of a disaster include power, water, sewer and wastewater, communications, education, emergency medical care, and fire protection/emergency services.

Cultural asset: Building, structure, landscape, object, or artifact that help establish a society’s social roots and history.

Cultural heritage: Movable or immovable objects, sites, structures, groups of structures, and natural features and landscapes that have archaeological, paleontological, historical, architectural, religious, aesthetic, or other cultural significance. May include historic buildings, historic areas and towns, archaeological sites, and the contents.

Cultural significance: The perceived value of an asset as a result of its continuity of presence and worth to society.

Demolition: Destruction of damaged structures to (1) eliminate an immediate threat to lives, public health, safety, and improved public or private property or (2) ensure the economic recovery of the affected community to the benefit of the overall community.

Detailed assessment: An in-depth assessment of disaster impact, often of a single location or a single sector, such as housing or environment. (See “rapid assessment.”)

Disaster: A situation or event which overwhelms local capacity, necessitating a request to a national or international level for external assistance; an unforeseen and often sudden event that causes great damage, destruction and human suffering.



Disaster debris: Waste items such as trees, woody debris, sand, mud, silt, gravel, building components and contents, wreckage, vehicles, and personal property that remain after a disaster.

Disaster response: Process to address the immediate conditions that threaten the lives, economy, and welfare of a community.

Disaster risk: The magnitude of potential disaster losses (in lives, health status, livelihoods, assets and services) in a particular community or group over some time period arising from its exposure to possible hazard events and its vulnerabilities to these hazards.

Disaster risk management: The systematic process of using administrative directives, organizations, and operational skills and capacities to implement strategies, policies, and coping capacities of society and communities to lessen the adverse impacts of hazards and the possibility of disaster.

Disaster risk reduction: The practice of reducing disaster risks through systematic analysis and management of the causal factors of disasters, including reduced exposure to hazards, lessened vulnerability of people and property, wise management of land and the environment, and improved preparedness.

Early-warning system: The set of capacities needed to provide timely and meaningful information to enable individuals, communities, and organizations threatened by hazards to prepare and to act appropriately and in sufficient time to reduce loss of life, injury, livelihoods, damage to property and damage to the environment.

Earthquake: A sudden motion or trembling caused by a release of strain accumulated within or along the edge of earth's tectonic plates.

Economic security: Conditions that allow a household or community to meet its essential economic needs in a sustainable way without resorting to strategies which are damaging to livelihoods, security, and dignity.

Emergency management: The organization and management of resources and responsibilities for addressing all aspects of emergencies, in particular, preparedness, response, and initial recovery.

Emergency services: The set of specialized agencies that have responsibility to serve and protect people and property in emergency situations.

Empowerment: Authority given to an institution or organization (or individual) to determine policy and make decisions. Inclusion of people who are ordinarily outside of the decision making process.

Enabling environment: The rules and regulations, both national and local, which provide a supportive environment for a specific activity, such as community participation or DRM, to take place.

Environmental degradation: The reduction of the capacity of the environment to meet social and ecological objectives and needs.

Environmental impact assessment: The process by which the environmental consequences of a proposed project or program are evaluated, undertaken as an integral part of planning and decision-making processes with a view to limiting or reducing the adverse impacts of the project or program.

Equity: The quality of being impartial and "fair" in the distribution of development benefits and costs and the provision of access to opportunities for all.

Erosion: The washing away of soil and rocks along streams and hillsides on public and private property Erosion may cause a threat to health, safety, and the environment.

Exposure: The experience of coming into contact with an environmental condition or social influence that has a harmful or beneficial effect.

Extortion: Threatening another with adverse consequences unless demands, usually for payment, are met.

Floodplain: Any land area, including a watercourse, susceptible to partial or complete inundation by water from any source. Floodplain maps show inundation limits for floods of selected recurrence intervals and are used for zoning, insurance, and other regulatory purposes regarding heath and safety.

Framework data: The seven themes of geospatial data that are used by most geographic information system (GIS) applications (geodetic control, orthoimagery, elevation and bathymetry, transportation, hydrography, cadastral, and governmental units). These data include an encoding of the geographic extent of the features and a minimal number of attributes needed to identify and describe the features.

Fraud: Deceiving another person in order to gain some financial or other advantage.

Geological hazard: Geological process or phenomenon that may cause loss of life, injury, and other health impacts, property damage, loss of livelihoods and services, social and economic disruption, or environmental degradation.

Geophysical disasters: Seismic events (such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, landslides) related to the motion of the earth’s tectonic plates.

Geo-referenced (or geo-spacial) information: Data, photos, or videos referenced geographically (for or by a GIS) relating to earth’s physical features and attributes such as latitude, longitude, or locality/jurisdiction. Can be used to assess damage, map hazards, identify natural and materials resources and critical infrastructure at risk, plan restoration, monitor progress, and evaluate results on maps using a GIS.

GLIDE (GLobal IDEntifier): A system of unique disaster identifying numbers which when referenced in data sets will save time; create a common reference point for relating Bank projects to diverse and scattered sources of data; and eliminate confusion.

Hazard mapping: The process of establishing geographically where and to what extent particular hazards are likely to pose a threat to people, property, or the environment.

Hazardous materials (HAZMAT): Any substance or material that, when involved in an accident and released in sufficient quantities, poses a risk to people’s health, safety, and/or property. Includes explosives, radioactive materials, flammable liquids or solids, combustible liquids or solids, poisons, oxidizers, toxins, and corrosive materials.

Heritage: The combined creation and products of nature and of man that make up the living environment in time and space, including monuments, archeological sites, and movable heritage collections, historic urban areas, vernacular heritage, cultural landscapes (tangible heritage, which include natural and cultural sites), and living dimensions of heritage and all aspects of the physical and spiritual relationship between human societies and their environment (intangible heritage).

Historic preservation: A professional endeavor that seeks to preserve, conserve and protect buildings, objects, landscapes or other artifacts of historic significance.

Host families: A transitional settlement option sheltering the displaced population within the households of local families or on land or in properties owned by them.

House design: The form, dimensions, natural lighting, ventilation, and spatial organization of dwellings.

House owner-occupant: Tenure option where the occupant owns the house and land or is in part-ownership, such as when repaying a mortgage or loan. Ownership may be formal or informal.

House tenant: Tenure option where the house and land are rented by the occupant, formally or informally.

Household: Members of the same family unit sharing common income and expenditure sources. This definition may vary from context to context.

Housing: The immediate physical environment, both within and outside of buildings, in which families and households live and which serves as shelter.

Housing standard: Level of quality of a dwelling generally linked with the social level of the residents (including size, location, architecture, cost, workmanship quality).

Housing-sector assessment: An assessment to collect information such as demographic data, housing types, housing tenure situations, settlement patterns before and after the disaster, government interventions in the housing sector, infrastructure access, construction capacity, and market capacity to provide materials and labor for reconstruction.

Hydraulics: A branch of science or engineering that addresses fluids (specially water) in motion, water’s action in rivers and channels, and works for raising water.

Hydrological disaster: Disaster event caused by deviations in the normal water cycle and/or overflow of bodies of water caused by wind set-up.

Hydrology: The scientific study of the waters of the earth, especially with relation to the effects of precipitation and evaporation on water in streams, lakes, and on or below the land surface.

Hydrometeorological disasters: The result from weather-related events, such as tropical water-related occurrences (hurricanes, typhoons, cyclones), windstorms, winter storms, tornadoes, and floods.

Hydrometeorological hazard: Process or phenomenon of atmospheric, hydrological or oceanographic nature that may cause loss of life, injury, and other health impacts, property damage, loss of livelihoods, and services, social and economic disruption, or environmental degradation.

Hyogo Framework for Action: The agreed framework of actions to reduce disaster risks from 2005–2015 established by more than 190 countries following the World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction held in Kobe, Hyogo Japan, January 2005.

Inflation: An increase in the supply of currency or credit relative to the availability of goods and services, resulting in higher prices and a decrease in the purchasing power of money.

Information and communications technologies (ICT): The collective technology used to create, store, exchange, analyze, and process information in all its forms integrated with the procedures and resources to collect, process, and communicate data.

Infrastructure: Systems and networks by which public services are delivered, including: water supply and sanitation; energy and other utility networks; and transportation networks for all modes of travel, including roads and other access lines.

Integrity pact: An agreement between government and bidders for public contracts that neither side will pay, offer, demand, or accept bribes nor collude with competitors in obtaining or carrying out the contract.

Internally displaced persons: Persons or groups of persons who have been forced or obliged to flee or to leave their homes or places of habitual residence—in particular as a result of or in order to avoid the effects of armed conflict, situations of generalized violence, violations of human rights, or natural or human-made disasters—and who have not crossed an internationally recognized state border.

Interoperability: The capability of different ICT applications to exchange data via common exchange, file formats, and protocols. In the broadest sense, interoperability takes into account the social, political, language, and organizational factors that impact system performance.

Land use planning: The process undertaken by public authorities to identify, evaluate, and decide on different options for the use of land areas, including consideration of (1) long-term economic, social, and environmental objectives; (2) the implications for different communities and interest groups; and (3) the subsequent formulation and promulgation of plans that describe the permitted or acceptable uses. (See “physical planning.”)

Landslide: Downward movement of a slope and materials under the force of gravity.

Lifelines: Public facilities and systems that provide basic life support services such as water, energy, sanitation, communications, and transportation.

Liquefaction: The phenomenon that occurs when ground shaking causes loose soils to lose strength and act like viscous fluid, which, in turn, causes two types of ground failure: lateral spread and loss of bearing strength.

Livelihoods: The ways in which people earn access to the resources they need, individually and communally, such as food, water, clothing, and shelter.

Logical framework (logframe): A conceptual tool used to define project, program, or policy objectives, and expected causal links in the results chain, including inputs, processes, outputs, outcomes, and impact. It identifies potential risks as well as performance indicators at each stage in the chain.

Loss assessment: Analyzes the changes in economic flows that occur after a disaster and over time, valued at current prices.

Market analysis: Research undertaken to understand how a market functions, how a crisis has affected it, and the need for and most appropriate form of support. Research can include information on supply and demand of goods and services, price changes, and income/salary data.

Metadata: Information about data, such as content, source, vintage, accuracy, condition, projection, responsible party, contact phone number, method of collection, and other characteristics or descriptions.

Meteorological disaster: Disaster event caused by short-lived/small to meso-scale atmospheric processes (in the spectrum from minutes to days).

Microfinance: A broad range of small-scale financial services (such as deposits, loans, payment services, money transfers, and insurance) to poor and low-income households and their microenterprises.

Mitigation: The lessening or limitation of the adverse impacts of hazards and related disasters.

Money-laundering: Moving cash or assets obtained by criminal activity from one location to another in order to conceal the source.

Monitoring: The ongoing task of collecting and reviewing program-related information that pertain to the program’s goals, objectives, and activities.

Morphology: The size, form and structure of an object (such as a house).

Natural hazard: Natural process or phenomenon that may cause loss of life, injury and other health impacts, property damage, loss of livelihoods and services, social and economic disruption, or environmental degradation.

Needs assessment: A process for estimating (usually based on a damage assessment) the financial, technical, and human resources needed to implement the agreed-upon programs of recovery, reconstruction, and risk management. It evaluates and “nets out” resources available to respond to the disaster.

Nongovernmental organization (NGO): A nonprofit, voluntary, service-oriented, and/or development-oriented organization, operated either for the benefit of its members or of other members, such as an agency. Also, civil society organization (CSO).

Nonstructural measures: Any measure not involving physical construction that uses knowledge, practice or agreement, to reduce risks and impacts, in particular through policies and laws, public awareness raising, training and education. (See “structural measures.”)

Open source: Nonproprietary software code and applications developed by a community of interested developers and made freely available (without a license) for use and further development. For example, Linux and many Google applications.

Open standards: Standards for ITC made available to the general public and are developed (or approved) and maintained via a collaborative and consensus-driven process. Open standards facilitate interoperability and data exchange among different products or services and are intended for widespread adoption.

Operating energy: The energy consumed by a building for heating, cooling, lightening and ventilating.

Owner-driven reconstruction (ODR): A reconstruction approach in which the homeowner undertakes rebuilding with or without external financial, material and technical assistance.

Physical planning: A design exercise based on a land use plan used to propose the optimal infrastructure for public services, transport, economic activities, recreation, and environmental protection for a settlement or area. A physical plan can have both rural and urban components, although the latter usually predominates. (See “land use planning.”)

Post-disaster needs assessment (PDNA): Usually a rapid, multi-sectoral assessment that measures the impact of disasters on the society, economy, and environment of the disaster-affected area.

Preparedness: The knowledge and capacities developed by governments, professional response and recovery organizations, communities, and individuals to effectively anticipate, respond to, and recover from the impacts of likely, imminent or current hazard events or conditions.

Prevention: Activities to provide outright avoidance of the adverse impact of hazards and means to minimize related environmental, technological and biological disasters; in the context of public awareness and education related to disaster risk reduction, changing attitudes and behavior to promote a “culture of prevention.”

Probability: A statistical measure of the likelihood that a hazard event will occur.

Project cycle (also “project life cycle”): The sequence of activities that make up a project and how they relate to one other, generally: identification, preparation, appraisal, presentation and financing, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation.

Quantitative data: Numerical information, such as numbers of intended recipients, payments disbursed, cash transferred, or days worked broken down by gender, age, and other variables.

Rapid assessment: An assessment that provides immediate information on needs, possible intervention types, and resource requirements. May be conducted as a multi-sectoral assessment or in a single sector or location. (See “detailed assessment.”)

Reconstruction: The restoration and improvement, where possible, of facilities, livelihoods, and living conditions of disaster-affected communities, including efforts to reduce disaster risk factors. Focused primarily on the construction or replacement of damaged physical structures, and the restoration of local services and infrastructure.

Recovery: Decisions and actions taken after a disaster to restore or improve the pre-disaster living conditions of the affected communities while encouraging and facilitating necessary adjustments to reduce disaster risk. Focused not only on physical reconstruction, but also on the revitalization of the economy, and the restoration of social and cultural life.

Recurrence interval: The time between hazard events of similar size in a given location based on the probability that the given event will be equaled or exceeded in any given year.

Regulatory measures: Legal and other regulatory instruments established by government to prevent, reduce, or prepare for losses, such as those associated with hazard events, such as land use regulations in high-risk zones.

Relief: The provision of assistance or intervention immediately after a disaster to meet the life preservation and basic subsistence needs of those people affected.

Relocation: A process whereby a community’s housing, assets, and public infrastructure are rebuilt in another location.

Remittances: Payments sent from migrant workers to family members in the country of origin.

Remote sensing: A field of study where the goal is to infer the properties of the earth’s surface or the atmosphere itself without being in direct contact with them. Post-disaster remote sensing includes imagery of the disaster area captured from aircraft and satellites to study changes to the landscape or structures.

Repair: Restoration to working order following decay, damage, or partial destruction.

Repair cost: The cost associated with the replacement or restoration of damaged components. It does not include upgrades of other components triggered by codes and standards, design associated with upgrades, demolition of the entire facility, site work, or applicable project management costs.

Replacement cost: The cost for all work necessary to provide a new facility of the same size or design capacity and function as the damaged facility in accordance with all current applicable codes and standards.

Resettlement (involuntary resettlement): Direct economic and social losses resulting from displacement caused by land taking or restriction of access to land, together with the consequent compensatory and remedial measures. Generally related to infrastructure projects or changes in land use for public purposes. Relocation is one mitigation measure considered in carrying out resettlement.

Residual risk: The risk that remains in unmanaged form, even when effective disaster risk reduction measures are in place, and for which emergency response and recovery capacities must be maintained.

Resilience: The ability of a system, community, or society potentially exposed to hazards to resist, absorb, adapt to, and recover from the stresses of a hazard event, including the preservation and restoration of its essential basic structures and functions.

Response: The provision of emergency services and public assistance during or immediately after a disaster to save lives, reduce health impacts, ensure public safety, and meet the basic subsistence needs of the affected people.

Results framework: A tool for identifying and measuring objectives at the sector, country or regional level, usually laid out in diagrammatic form. It uses an objective tree to link high-level objectives through a hierarchy to program-level outcomes (and ultimately individual activities) and sets out a means by which achievement at all levels can be measured.

Retrofitting: Reinforcement or upgrading of existing structures to become more resistant and resilient to the forces of hazards.

Return period: The estimated likelihood of a disaster reoccurring in an area; a series of probable events.

Rights-based assessment: Evaluates whether people’s basic rights are being met. The basis is generally considered to be the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Risk: The probability that a particular level of loss will be sustained by a given series of elements as a result of a given level of hazard. Elements under threat can include populations, communities, the built environment, the natural environment, economic activities, and services.

Risk analysis: A determination of the nature and extent of risk by analyzing potential hazards and evaluating existing conditions of vulnerability that could pose a potential threat or harm to people, property, livelihoods, and the environment on which they depend.

Risk assessment: A methodology to determine the nature and extent of risk by analyzing potential hazards and evaluating existing conditions of vulnerability that together could potentially harm exposed people, property, services, livelihoods, and the environment on which they depend.

Risk atlas: A series of maps showing community damages and losses as well as hazard areas for a series of probable events; a separate map is generated for each return period event. (See “return periods.”)

Risk management: The systematic approach and practice of managing uncertainty and potential losses through a process of risk assessment and analysis and the development and implementation of strategies and specific actions to control, reduce, and transfer risks.

Risk transfer: The process of formally or informally shifting the financial consequences of particular risks from one party to another whereby one party (a household, community, enterprise, or state authority) will obtain post-disaster resources from another party in exchange for ongoing or compensatory social or financial benefits.

Secondary hazard: A threat whose potential would be realized as the result of a triggering event that itself constitutes an emergency (for example, dam failure can be a secondary hazard associated with earthquakes).

Shelter: A habitable covered living space, providing a secure, healthy living environment with privacy and dignity for the groups, families, and individuals residing within it.

Social protection: Public measures to provide income security to the population. Use of social risk management to reduce the economic vulnerability of households and to help smooth consumption patterns.

Social safety net: Generally refers to non-contributory transfers (in cash or in kind), targeted at both populations at risk of economic destitution and the permanently poor, designed to keep their income above a specified minimum level.

Squatter: A person occupying a housing unit or land without legal title to it.

Stakeholders: All those agencies and individuals who have a direct or indirect interest in a humanitarian intervention or development project, or who can affect or are affected by the implementation and outcome of it. 

Storm surge: Rise in the water surface above normal water level on the open coast due to the action of wind stress and atmospheric pressure on the water surface.

Structural measures: Any physical construction to reduce or avoid possible impacts of hazards, or application of engineering techniques to achieve hazard-resistance and resilience in structures or systems. (See “nonstructural measures.”)

Sustainable development: Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Transitional reconstruction: The processes by which populations affected but not displaced by conflict or natural disasters achieve durable solutions to their settlement and shelter needs.

Transitional settlement: the processes by which populations affected and displaced by conflict or natural disasters achieve settlement and shelter throughout the period of their displacement, prior to beginning transitional reconstruction.

Transitional shelter: Shelter that provides a habitable covered living space and a secure, healthy living environment with privacy and dignity for those within it during the period between a conflict or natural disaster and the achievement of a durable shelter solution.

User-driven reconstruction: Similar to owner-driven reconstruction, the approach in which the occupant of the property may not be the owner in a formal sense but may still possess sufficient property rights or sense of ownership to be willing to take on the reconstruction responsibility. 

Vernacular architecture: The dwellings and other buildings that reflect people’s environmental contexts and available resources, customarily owner- or community-built, utilizing traditional technologies. Vernacular architecture reflects the specific needs, values, economies, and ways of life of the culture that produces them. They may be adapted or developed over time as needs and circumstances change.

Vulnerability: The relative lack of capacity of a community or ability of an asset to resist damage and loss from a hazard.
The conditions determined by physical, social, economic, political, and environmental factors or processes that increase the susceptibility of a community to the impact of hazards.

Vulnerable groups: Groups or members of groups particularly exposed to the impact of hazards, such displaced people, women, the elderly, the disabled, orphans, and any group subject to discrimination.

Warning systems: Mechanisms used to persuade and enable people and organizations to take actions to increase safety and reduce the impacts of a hazard.

Watershed: An area of land from which all of the water under it or on it drains to the same place, which may be a river, lake, reservoir, estuary, wetland, sea or ocean.