RHEAT™

A practical tool for resilient housing ecosystem assessment

Chart your path to resilient housing

RHEAT™ provides a clear framework to achieve a snapshot of the enabling environment for resilient housing in a specific location, letting you understand where the ecosystem is on the path to resilient housing, and how Build Change can help you on the journey.

About RHEAT™

The Resilient Housing Ecosystem Assessment Tool (RHEAT™) has been developed by Build Change to help countries, states, territories, cities, and communities identify key gaps and challenges as they work toward achieving resilient housing at scale.

How can I use RHEAT™?

Build Change is ready to learn more about your housing ecosystem and provide our expertise to complete an RHEAT™ with you. The results of an RHEAT™ can:

Enable governments and development agencies to better prepare a new housing improvement program or evaluate and adjust an existing program for improved resilience outcomes.
Help donors make informed decisions for resilient housing efforts, as well as track and measure systems-change-level results over time.
Provide insights and recommendations to multilateral institutions on a specific location or generate comparisons across many locations for decision making, monitoring or project initiation.
Support grassroots community organizations to prioritize actions that are achievable and effective in improving housing outcomes where they work.

Performing an RHEAT™ is a useful way to guide understanding of priorities and resource allocation, and in doing so can help maximize the chance of a program’s success in improving building resilience.

Case Study: Turkiye

Build Change performed an RHEAT™ to inform its approach to developing a housing resilience program in Turkiye, and specifically, the city of Adana. Check out the resulting RHEAT™ outputs and recommendations below.

Turkiye RHEAT™ Adana RHEAT™Turkiye RHEAT™ presentation

How does it work?

RHEAT™ specifically tracks progress against the three areas of People/Policy, Money, and Technology. It includes a series of benchmark indicators and a score is assigned to each based on the current level of progress in that area. The tool should be revisited at regular intervals to review and reassess progress against each indicator. Over time, progress is observed as the colors on the assessment tool change from red – indicating that certain criteria are inexistent or not working – to blue – indicating that resilient housing goals have been achieved.

Spotlight on RHEAT™ and our Theory of Change

Build Change has identified People/Policy, Money, and Technology as the three main barriers to the adoption of resilient housing at scale. Put simply, homeowners will not live in disaster-resistant houses unless they can afford to, and have access to needed technology, materials, and skilled construction workers. They also need government agencies to be able to provide incentives and enforce building standards. The high level of interdependence between the three main areas makes it necessary to take a holistic approach that considers all three, to successfully design policies, programs, or products to overcome gaps and challenges in any one area. For more information on Build Change’s Theory of Change and implementing successful resilient housing programs, refer to The Build Change Guide to Resilient Housing: An Essential Handbook for Government and Practitioners.

Exploring RHEAT™

This tool is intended to provide a quick, high-level snapshot of the ecosystem for resilient housing for a user-specified location and point in time. We have provided an interactive RHEAT™ form below to help you explore the tool. For a more in-depth assessment, analysis, and recommendations on the next steps, contact us!

RHEAT™ Form

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