WHE-kipedia

The World Housing Encyclopedia (WHE) is an online repository of resources related to housing construction practices in seismically active areas worldwide. It includes housing reports, tutorials, and other publications. The mission is to share experiences with different construction practices and building typologies and encourage the use of earthquake-resistant housing construction worldwide.

The WHE has developed and published around 150 housing reports, covering common residential construction typologies from around 50 countries. Each housing report is a detailed description of a housing type in a particular country. The description is prepared from a number of standard closed-ended questions and includes a narrative provided by the report authors. Each report has ten major categories, including general information, architectural features, socio-economic issues, structural features, evaluation of seismic features, past earthquake damage, building materials, construction economics, insurance, and seismic strengthening. A list of relevant references used in the text is also provided at the end of each report.

The WHE was founded in 2000 by the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI) and the International Association of Earthquake Engineering (IAEE). The WHE housing reports were originally developed and reviewed by volunteers, engineers and architects from around the world. The report review and editing process has been managed by the WHE leadership, and hosted on the EERI website. The current version of the reports, presented in the Wiki form, is a joint initiative of WHE and Global Earthquake Model (GEM).

These housing reports can be used for educational and non-commercial purposes only, but WHE needs to be acknowledged as the source of the material. Also, should you consider using any part of this material in any publication of your own, you must get written permission from EERI. All of the content on this site has been contributed by volunteers. If you are interested in writing a housing report, tutorial, or have any other ideas for content, please reach out to us at whe@eeri.org.

To explore the WHE housing reports, please use the Search tool. Type a country name or construction you are interested in, e.g.: “India adobe”.

Continent: Africa; Asia & Mideast; Europe; North & Central America; South-America.

Construction: Adobe/Earthen; Unreinforced Masonry, Stone Masonry, Confined Masonry, Reinforced Masonry; Reinforced Concrete Frame, Reinforced Concrete Shear Wall, Precast Concrete; Seismic Protection Systems; Steel Moment Frame, Steel Braced Frame; Timber; Timber/Masonry; Vernacular.