Resilient infrastructure planning in refugee and internally displaced person settlements
A systematic review of scholarly and grey literature
J.G. Gnowa (TU Delft - Transport and Logistics)
J. Verschuur (TU Delft - Transport and Logistics)
M. Comes (Deutsches Zentrum für Luft- und Raumfahrt (DLR), TU Delft - Transport and Logistics)
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Abstract
Refugee and internally displaced persons (IDPs) settlements are increasingly exposed to shocks such as rapid population influxes and extreme weather events, yet infrastructure planning in these contexts remains largely focused on static, reactive responses, often overlooking resilience. This study examines how resilience is conceptualized in infrastructure planning for refugee and IDP settlements and identifies the key constraints to its enhancement. To address this, we conduct a systematic literature review of scholarly (n = 75) and grey literature (n = 30), including only studies focused on infrastructure planning in refugee or IDP settlements. The selected studies are analyzed using a framework that categorizes them by infrastructure sectors, resilience dimensions, and constraints.
The findings reveal an uneven focus across infrastructure sectors, with shelter, energy, and WASH dominating the literature. Resilience in the scholarly literature is primarily conceptualized through robustness, adaptability, and transformability, with limited integration of preparedness and recovery, and these dimensions are rarely addressed holistically. Furthermore, resilience is constrained by interrelated factors, like resource limitations, weak coordination among actors, land ownership, and institutional constraints.
These results highlight the need for integrated, cross-sectoral planning approaches that incorporate underexplored infrastructure sectors, address underemphasized resilience dimensions, and embed refugee and IDP settlements within host countries' regional planning frameworks to alleviate constraints to resilience enhancement.
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