Design for disaster – aid, victims, information, communication, knowledge, experiences, ideas, projects

Covid-19 rapid deployment test centre

Two of the most pressing needs worldwide in the coronavirus pandemic are for more hospital beds and testing centres. No country in the world has enough hospital beds or intensive-care unit (ICU) beds for a pandemic. We need structures that can be quickly and easily assembled, are inexpensive and meet technical requirements. Architects have always […]
Biodiversity conservation and business

The biological diversity makes our lives livable in the planet trough an array of ecological processes which provide us vital products and services, such as foods and materials that contributes to the economy. Although, factors such as habitat destruction, biological invasion and climate change have been taken numerous species to extinction. The lasting natural areas […]
Blue Freedom – Providing reliable first aid electricity from hydropower

Electrical power supply is among the first critically important services in disaster areas. Especially natural disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes or floodings lead to a destruction of the installed power grid and portable electricity becomes indispensable. One innovative solution is Blue Freedom Portable, a lightweight hydropower generator with 5W output capacity. With a weight of […]
Transition of Shelters – Portable Emergency Shelter

Migratation of refugess are indeed a serious disruption of the functioning of a community or a Society involving widespread human, material, economic or environmental losses and impacts, which exceeds the ability of the affected community or society to cope using its own resources. It affects both physically and mentally. It also causes health and safety […]
Inflatable Refugee Tents

A new refugee tent has been designed by the team at M2B Inflatable in Sofia, Bulgaria. This refugee tent is inflatable and will offer an affordable, dignified and practical shelter against extreme weather. The inflatable tent provides immediate emergency housing solutions and adapts to any disaster area. The inflated walls of the tent will offer […]
The Modern Yurk – A Possible Design for Relief Scenarios?

The Scottish company Trakke has redeveloped the nomadic yurt shelter and created the Jero Yurt. The temporary housing innovation is a lightweight dwelling that pops up and was designed to be used for events such as backyard parties or off-grid camping experiences with a modern twist. The Jero’s compact design even allows it to be […]
innonatives first challenge winners 2015

The innonatives team is proud to present the first winners of the first completed innonatives challenge. Please see here for the winning solutions of the Sustainable Kitchen challenge http://innonatives.com/challenge/sus-brazil/solutions-sorted/winners Congratulations to the winners !!! Your innonatives Team
AIDF Disaster relief infographic d4d

Download & share the #infographic on the importance of #PPPs & #tech in disaster management: http://bit.ly/1qj6Evn http://ow.ly/i/6Ku5d
PowerCube Pop-up Solar Generator Provides Relief to Disaster-Struck Areas

It was seven years ago that Ecosphere Technologies revealed its first iteration of a self-contained relief unit for disaster-struck areas. The company has since been busy refining the system’s form and function and has now announced the completion of what it says to be the world’s largest deployable solar power generator. Capable of generating 15 […]
Sustainability Maker needs you !

Join the next big thing! Attend the first Sustainability Maker Convention, the world’s first conference on Open Innovation, Crowd Sourcing and Crowd Funding for Sustainability. Be among the first to witness the start of the next Sustainability innovation movement and to know about the www.innonatives.com open innovation for Sustainability platform. Registration Please register online before October […]

Introduction

Disasters such as, earthquakes, hurricanes, floods, famines and wars cause destruction and suffering to humankind. Whether these are natural and inevitable, or man-made and unnecessary, we can improve our means of reacting and aiding the victims affected.

This website is to function as a source of information and a communication platform for exchanging knowledge, experience, ideas and projects. How can we design life in a way that we are better prepared and have better infrastructure, methods to avoid damage, suffering and death tolls?

Short and direct

Habitat for Humanity helps Haiti

Three years ago, Haiti was hit by a devastating earthquake of magnitude 7.0. Habitat for Humanity was able to help more than 200,000 people. Just recently the “Jimmy Carter Project 2012” took place. Though recovery has been slow and arduous, progress is visible in the new community of Santo. In February 2012, 155 families moved from […]

Hangout

Hangout is a semi-permanent shelter which combines the practicality of a tent and the safety and comfort of a house. It was designed as a solution to accommodate the influx of tourists visiting an urban area during the period that it hosts a festival. Hangout consists of a tarpaulin which is stretched in-between two wooden facades. one side […]

Map of Life

Map of Life is built with the technology of Google Maps. The pilot of the Map of Life website allows users to map the global distribution of almost all 30,000 species of terrestrial vertebrate animals, including mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and North American fresh water fish. The platform is meant to inform users about the […]

Habitat for Humanity

Habitat for Humanity International is a nonprofit, Christian organization that seeks to eliminate poverty housing and homelessness from the world and to make decent shelter a matter of conscience and action worldwide. Habitat has built and renovated more than 500,000 homes around the world, providing more than 2.5 million people with safe, decent, affordable shelter. […]

Earthbag building solutions

EarthKaya is dedicated in providing low cost, low impact, earth bag building solutions in South Africa. Less time, less impact, less cost. In a world where organic agriculture is more expensive than traditional crops, solar panels are often costly to install and electric cars are inconvenient to run, many people may be reluctant to ‘go […]

Harvest water out of dry

Dutch entrepreneur Pieter Hoff retired from exporting flowers and turned to invention. His invention, Groasis Waterboxx is basically a 20-inch by 10-inch polypropylene box that captures water from the air in order to support the growth of new plants and trees. The inspiration for this box is modeled after the way excrement protects seeds that […]

Recovering Tohoku

After the Tohoku Kanto great earthquake (on March 11, 2011, at 2:46 pm local time), a magnitude 9.0 earthquake (7 shindo on the japanese scale) occurred off the coast of Miyagi Prefecture in Japan. It was followed by a huge tsunami. This earthquake is the strongest ever recorded in japan, and the fourth largest recorded […]

Mobile Hospital

A new hospital typology has been designed by the team of Hord Coplan Macht + Spevco that eliminates the need for a standard hospital. In their design, 58 trailers provide a fully operational, fully mobile 48-bed hospital. The trailers include every aspect of a hospital – from waiting gift shops, to surgical suites with four […]

Shelter Centre

Shelter Centre is a non-governmental organization registered in Switzerland that supports the sector of humanitarian operations that responds to the transitional settlement and reconstruction needs of populations affected by conflicts and natural disasters, from the emergency phase until durable solutions are reached. – The activities of Shelter Centre The 2006 – 2011 programme supports the […]

Monash Disaster Resilience Initiative

The Monash Disaster Resilience Initiative (MDRI) has been established to harness university-wide expertise with the goal of strengthening community-based disaster resilience. The aim is to provide the expertise to shape new approaches to disaster preparedness and management under the context of the Council of Australian Governments’ National Strategy for Disaster Resilience. This will […]

Disaster management with fireballs from Intel

These spherical, rugged, low-cost and autonomous sensors from Intel are designed to be thrown into a fire and report back data such as temperature, free-volatiles and air quality to first responder trucks via WiFi. Vital information such as the hottest spot and the chemical composition of a fire can be sent to both the firefighters’ smartphones and […]

ad – hab+

adaptable habitat for aid distribution in crisis areas – 2011 ad – hab+ is an adaptable, mobile, multifunctional and lightweight habitation system primarily for aid distribution in catastrophic and crisis areas. The shape is bionic, inspired by and further developed out of polyhedrical foam structures. Due to the geometry, technical and spatial clustering of several units […]

Tulip Siphon Water Filter

An innovative, low-cost water filter for families in developing countries Hundreds of millions of people still only have access to unsafe drinking water sources. Inadequate access to safe water and sanitation services, coupled with poor hygiene practices, kills and sickens thousands of children every day and leads to impoverishment and diminished opportunities for millions of […]

Palliative Radiotherapy for Developing Countries

The world is facing a crisis in cancer management that concerns developing countries in particular. The average life expectancy in developing countries is increasing in a predictable way. Data from the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) indicates that cancer incidence in developing countries will increase dramatically in the first two decades of this […]

Paper Partition System

SHIGERU BAN ARCHITECTS are currently preparing to deploy simple partitions for evacuees taking shelter at gymnasiums in the Tohoku region. For people taking shelter in these sites, it is necessary to avoid distress from the lack of privacy and high density. SHIGERU BAN ARCHITECTS asks for support of this important disaster relief endeavor. Donations made to the following […]

Tsunami House Living Room

In order to be better prepared for disasters, primarily focused on resistance to tsunamis, the resistance disaster house was designed to safeguard families living in vulnerable coastal areas in Japan. This resistance disaster house design was designed to resist disaster and to provide shelter from natural disasters. This Tsunami house resistance design is located in […]

Vaccine

The medical companies Quadrant Holdings (UK) and Chiron Vaccines (USA) have developed a new vaccination substance based on Trehalose that is resistant to temperature. Standard vaccinations are not resistant to ambient temperatures, they need to be cooled in order to be implemented for vaccination campaigns. This cooling requires a special effort in rural areas of […]

Phytocorps

Phytocorps is an educational project about Phytoremediation with application and impact in Rhode Island, USA, at the site of a chemical accident. In October 2004, youth found large quantities of mercury in an abandoned mercury reclamation area bordering the river’s edge in Pawtucket, Rhode island, which resulted in a community wide evacuation. Investigating the demographics […]

Non-Electric Incubator for Premature Infants

In the developing world every year almost one million infants die in their first month of life due to the results of premature birth, heat loss and dehydration. To address this problem, the non-electric premature incubator is adapted to conditions in developing countries. Modern high tech incubators don’t adequately serve the developing world, because they […]

WAPI

Water Pasteurization Indicator (WAPI) The Indicator is a simple device that uses the melting point of a special kind of soy wax as an indicator for water pasteurization. The heating of water or milk to kill disease-causing organisms is known as pasteurization. A temperature of more than 65°C is sufficient for the elimination of microbes, […]

Spider Boot

Spider Boot Antipersonnel Mine Foot Protection System The Spider Boot is a foot protection device for demining activities that is used in combination with conventional demining protection gear. The protection of the foot is enhanced by lifting the boot up from the ground with a platform, creating distance from the source of the blast. The […]

Minus Mines

The mine detector “Minus Mines” employs a new method of landmine detection, using a method for electro-chemical sensation of TNT in the air, comparable to the a sniffer dog detects smell. Landmines are one of the cruelest representations of aftermaths of war: worldwide 100 million people are buried in former regions of war because of […]

Sahel Project – SilicateTechnology

The Sustainable Economy Initiative of the Austrian Federal Ministry of Transport, Innovation and Technology has developed a silicate technology to improve the water storage properties of marginal soils in the Sahel region of Africa. The concept of the silicate consists of combining the positive aspects of two different kinds of soil. Sandy soils have a […]

Refugee Wear

Refugee Wear / Body Architecture by Lucy Orta Since the early 90s, British born, France residing, Lucy Orta engages in designing garments for refugees and homeless people that can be transformed into tents as an artistic statement about their situation. Inspiration was evoked by the miserable situation of Kurds fleeing Irak in the early 90s. […]

Mella Jaarsma

Mella Jaarsma is a Dutch-Indonesian artist who creates clothing for installations and performances that deal with the themes of ethnic differences and the situation of refugees. Born in 1960 in Emmeloord, The Netherlands, the Dutch artist moved to Jakarta, Indonesia, in 1984, where she has been living ever since and now works both as an […]

Together for Girls

Together for Girls – Designers on a Mission The Sportswear company Nike initiated a project in cooperation with the UNHCR and Care to design sportswear for Somalian refugee girls. The project took place in the Dadaab refugee camp in Kenya where 140.000 Somalian refugees fled due to the crisis in 1991/92. The population is Muslim, […]

Paper Tube Housing by Shigeru Ban

Japanese architect Shigeru Ban designs intermediate emergency shelters made of paper tubing. He began working with cardboard tubing in cooperation with the UNHCR during the humanitarian crisis of war-torn Rwanda in 1994. Before his work, refugees were provided with aluminum poles and plastic sheeting for shelter construction. But as the aluminum poles gained good prices […]

Concrete Canvas

The British industrial design firm Crawford Brewin Ltd. developed a semi-permanent shelter for relief aid out of a material called concrete canvas. The package of materials for constructing the shelter consists of a canvas stained with a dry cement ratio united by a PVA adhesive and an inner layer of plastic sheeting, sealed in a […]