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Over the years, the significance of retrofitting has gained much attention with the unveiling of its different applications, such as energy retrofit and deep retrofit, to enhance the climate-resilience of buildings. However, no single study comprehensively assesses the climate-resilience of retrofitting. The purpose of this study is to address this gap via a systematic literature review.

Quality journal studies were selected using the PRISMA method and analysed manually and using scientometrics. Three dimensions of climate-resilience, such as robustness, withstanding and recovery, were used to evaluate the contribution of retrofit measures for achieving climate-resilient houses across four climate zones: tropical, arid, temperate and cold.

Most passive measures can enhance the robustness of residential buildings but cannot verify for withstanding against immediate shocks and timely recovery. However, some passive measures, such as night-time ventilation, show excellent performance over all four climate zones. Active measures such as heating, ventilation and air conditioning and mechanical ventilation with heat recovery, can ensure climate-resilience in all three dimensions in the short-term but contribute to greenhouse gas emissions, further exacerbating the long-term climate. Integrating renewable energy sources can defeat this issue. Thus, all three retrofit strategies should appropriately be adopted together to achieve climate-resilient houses.

Since the research is limited to secondary data, retrofit measures recommended in this research should be further investigated before application.

This review contributes to the knowledge domain of retrofitting by assessing the contribution of different retrofit measures to climate-resilience.

The sluggish progression of disaster-induced housing reconstruction (DHR) in Sri Lanka provoked the assessment of drywall technologies as a mode of improving efficiency. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the applicability of drywall technologies to adopt a technical solution to DHR.

The research contextualized a mixed research design via a case-study strategy integrating semi-structured interviews, documentary reviews and observations. Two cases based on the 2016 Samasarakanda landslide were investigated. Within-case-analysis and cross-case-analysis were performed to derive conclusions.

Enablers for drywall technologies application are time saving, cost-saving, less water consumption and logistical easiness. Less strength of drywall technologies will not be a critical obstruction owing to the expected disaster resilience from the concrete frame and the subsequent requirement of non-load bearing walls for landslide DHR. Labor source, community acceptance, durability are potential settings of barriers. Observing model houses, researching the resistance of drywall technologies to landslide-induced vibrations and impulsive waves are some further research areas discovered.

Empirical findings are centered on the 2016 Samasarakanda DHR.

Because of many issues in updating guidelines, drawings and BOQs, a protocol should be gazetted in the parliament to improve its updating flexibility allowing provisions to apply novel technologies for DHR.

Being one of the very first of this kind of research, contextually, the research is original. This study provokes insightful investigation of drywall technologies for DHR beyond its overlooked properties. This study reveals many wall construction challenges of the 2016 Samasarakanda DHR which have not yet been explored in research.