Post-tsunami resettlement in Sri Lanka and India: Site planning, infrastructure and services

After the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami, major resettlement programmes were implemented in the affected countries including Sri Lanka and India. Studies of such programmes were conducted in Sri Lanka and India where new settlements were built from scratch on vacant land, which consisted of building new houses and provision of infrastructure and services. Based on interviews of residents and representatives of agencies involved in planning and implementing the programmes, critical aspects of settlement development are reviewed here including site planning, transport, drainage, water supply, sanitation, waste management and security. Notwithstanding the difficulty of implementing such programmes within the constraints of a post-disaster situation, the drawbacks revealed in the studies indicates that residents are confronted with great challenges in inhabiting these settlements. The paper concludes by highlighting the resourcefulness, resilience and adaptive capacity of communities in these settlements for making the settlements more habitable, and the potential for organisations to build more successful settlements by taking these qualities into account.