Safety and health of workers in post-disaster reconstruction: a scoping review and evidence map

Post-disaster reconstruction (PDR) is essential for restoring damaged communities, yet the occupational safety and health (OSH) of PDR workers remains poorly understood. Although PDR involves many familiar construction hazards, these risks arise under distinct conditions, including damaged infrastructure, compressed recovery timelines, environmental contamination, fragmented governance, and pressure for visible recovery. This scoping review and evidence map examined peer-reviewed and authoritative gray literature on OSH among PDR workers. Following PRISMA-ScR guidance, the review used a Population-Concept-Context framework to search bibliographic databases and targeted organizational sources for English-language literature published from 2005 to 2025. The final evidence base included 55 sources, comprising 40 peer-reviewed publications and 15 gray literature documents. The review identified a geographically uneven and thematically concentrated evidence base, with strong representation from the United States and multi-country sources, and greater attention to multi-hazard and earthquake-related contexts than to other disaster types. Findings show that PDR workers face overlapping OSH hazards and exposures. Evidence was strongest for early recovery tasks such as debris removal, demolition, and cleanup, while later reconstruction phases, informal labor, volunteers, undocumented workers, and self-recovery residents remained underexamined. The review also highlights major methodological, policy, and practice gaps, including limited longitudinal evidence, inconsistent outcome measures, weak surveillance, and insufficient worker-specific protections. By integrating peer-reviewed and gray literature, this review frames PDR as a distinct OSH context and develops Faster Reconstruction Syndrome as a concept, interpreted through Job Demands-Resources and safety-climate theory to explain how recovery-speed pressures may weaken worker protection in disaster recovery policy and practice.