Disaster-Resilient Building: Lesson Learned from a Building Performance Evaluation of Meuraxa Hospital in Aceh, Indonesia

Abstract

The post-disaster evaluation of buildings during occupancy should indicate whether the reconstruction has succeeded in acting as a catalyst for recovery and whether further requirements for assistance are needed. Among other structures, hospitals are considered the most essential assets in disaster management. Located near the coastal area, Meuraxa Hospital is one of the public hospitals, which was destroyed by a tsunami and earthquake in 2004. The hospital was rebuilt in a new location within the city far away from the shoreline. The aim of this study is to evaluate the building performance of Meuraxa Hospital following its post-disaster reconstruction using three main variables: Built Environment and User Building, Building System Levels, and Disaster Risk Management (DRM). The sample units are individuals including hospital staff and visitors selected through probability sampling. In 2012, Meuraxa Hospital had 269 staff and 183 patients for a total of 452 people; the sample size was 107 respondents. This study used a modified AEDET toolkit proven to be valid and reliable in a previous study by the same author. The modification goal is to meet the local needs by adding a building system representing local regulations and DRM for the post-disaster context. The scales of performances for the questionnaires are adopted in full from the AEDET system using a descriptive statistic with the average score for each variable. Additionally, interviews with key persons and field observations were integrated for a comprehensive analysis. The total score for Built Environment and Building User is 3.61 (“accepted”), for Building System, it is 3.69 (“accepted”), and for DRM, it is 3.53 (“accepted”). Meuraxa Hospital is a collaboration project with multiple donors including Indonesia, Austria, and Hungary. Each donor built a separate building in one compound. Two major criticisms resulted: First, the donors refused to facilitate hospital management space, which does not make sense as such space is necessary to operate a hospital. The second involved the failure of the semi-stilt design applied, which was difficult to maintain and became a burden because waste and rainwater were collected under it. In general, the performance of the hospital building is acceptable. The lesson learned was that each donor has different quality control standards during construction, and this results in a variety of building qualities in one compound project. Hospital management is one of the main activities in a hospital that should be accommodated, and designing public buildings with semi-stilts is not recommended as maintenance is difficult. In the context of tsunami and earthquake risks, designing and building use strong construction, a flexible structure, and multistory buildings are more significant.