Learning from the Bibby Barge

An interested reader asked for my opinion on the ‘Bibby Barge’, happy to oblige.

For context, the Bibby Barge refers to the Bibby Stockholm barge. A barge is an engineless ship. Barges like this one are used for a variety of things, this one in particular has been used for high density housing.

This barge has been used in multiple locations around the world, often as part of a housing solution for refugees.

It has been the case that when discussing issues around housing, people will also bring up immigration policy and this can go down a particular conversation path around immigration reform.

While that is a relevant and important conversation for any country to have, as almost any federal policy would be, that will not be my initial focus.

Much of what I do surrounds two particular professional categories: emergency management and disaster risk reduction.

From an emergency management context, the immigration policy is not particularly relevant outside of assisting police with whatever the law dictates they need to do.

Emergency management is often focused on dealing with consequences. Within the relationship of cause and effect it is focused on the effect and is not generally concerned with or afforded the time and resources to influence the cause.

With that in mind, the relevant challenge mostly surrounds population density, any strain on infrastructure, and the general things one would have to be concerned with in ensuring people are healthy and safe.

The country has decided to house these people, so we need to make sure they are taken care of, from an emergency management perspective, not much else is really relevant.

Prior to the barge being utilized, many of these regions put asylum seekers in hotels. The barge was seen as a lower-cost alternative. Given how resources are limited, and any strain on infrastructure can have a long-term effect on the entire population, this can be a very attractive alternative.

As with most things, with reduced cost can come unintended consequences.

Increased population density can result in increased spread of disease and other public health challenges. The barge may have less access to private individual bathroom facilities, opting for some aspects of this to be communal. This can result in hygiene challenges.

Regardless of the cause, putting people in less costly housing can have the effect of increased strain on the healthcare system or other social services. 

Some countries that have utilized the barge, like the United Kingdom, have socialized medical systems. Given that these are legal refugees, it is expected that they will have access to these medical services and they would in turn put some strain on the system.

Disaster risk reduction might be interested in this from a policy standpoint and would want to look at the total cost to the jurisdiction, be it the country, the city, or whatever region it is concerned with.

It could be possible that by putting people in the less costly accommodations there is increased strain on social systems, it could be the case that the increased cost of this strain is so large that it would have actually been cheaper to just put them in the hotels.

The reverse of this could also be true, it all comes down to how the risk is calculated and what the primary concerns are for the people who are running the numbers.

Learn more and watch the full video here.

Vezina is the CEO of Prepared Canada Corp. He can be reached at info@prepared.ca.