Mahmood Hosseini - Associate Professor in Structural Engineering Research Center, and Board Member of the Center of Excellence on Risk Management, The International Institute of Earthquake Engineering and Seismology (IIEES), Tehran, Iran

Past earthquakes have proved that there has been always a time delay in the presence of rescue and relief teams in the stricken area, and therefore, the first help providers to the stricken people have been always the local people themselves. On this basis, giving more self-help capability to the people is a necessity for successful emergency management in large and populated cities. This paper discusses the idea of creating multi-purpose complexes with special architectural and structural features in city districts, so that they can be used not only for providing the local people in each area with the required tools and facilities for self-help in emergencies, but also they can be centers for several activities related to community-based disaster risk management. Various functions and the special architectural features of the complex to facilitate those functions, as well as its structural specifications to be quite safe and fully functional after the earthquake are explained. It is believed that creating such complexes in various neighborhoods of the city districts has several advantages of which one is the higher preparedness level of the community.

Neighborhood self-help, upgrading people preparedness, sheltering the homeless, new materials and construction technologies