Design for Disaster

Rational

The Bangladesh people suffer from a yearly devastating cyclone and face the hard task of regathering themselves to start over. The problems they face along the path to recovery happen due to issues with pre disaster technology, problems during and after the event.

The issue I decided to address was the inability to recover or supply fresh water to the population. This was due to mass flooding which destroyed the usual sources of fresh water by contaminating them with sewerage and other impurities.

This project took into consideration the financial situation of the country when designing this product. My original idea was to be a tent that had its own rain water catchment and storage system. This idea came about after reading accounts of the aftermath of the storm bringing heavy rain and storms to the region. My first thought was how could I harness these storms to benefit survivors.

Problems faced when designing such an object is that tents have been designed so many times I thought it would not be a good idea to try and make my own tent but instead just focus my attention on the water catchment system. The system would be designed to suit the tents already being supplied to the areas affected. These tents consisted of a very simple canvas triangle tent, which were very common amongst the camps.

Other issues that arose when designing this product were creating an over flow that would allow the water to not just build up in the catchment area. This was a problem as the catchment was only supposed to create a sieve like response and fill up the jug, bottle or container connected. I found that if the catchment filled up too much it would become too heavy for the tents canvas outer shell and may collapse the tent. This was overcome in the finished design with a sufficient overflow compartment.

The second issue was wether to integrate a filter system into the design. My final design did not include such a device although having one would be of great significance although there may be ‘bugs’ in the rain water some exposure to UV light would diminish the risk of an infection enormously. With this I included a clear bottle that is a flat pack piece, after it is filled it can be used for cooking or just left in the sun for a required amount of time to kill any remaining bacterial in the water.

Overall the product designed was designed functionally to work and stay in the financial constraints of the countries it is meant for. The product can all have a use with in other disasters all over the world as it can be valuable even after the disaster has past.

Reflection

Project 1 was an incredibly difficult project to design for as i had no idea how to design for a disaster struck area. Although in the process of the assignement i learned a lot about the affects of these disasters on countries such as Bangladesh. The difficult part of this assignement was designing a quality part for such a poor nation who needed aid desparately.

My idea sprang to me during the research stage although at that stage i didn't have an idea of how i could achieve it. The idea was a water catchment system that could be drapped over the existing tents being used in the disaster area, and could be hung from trees if the tent could not take the strain. i tried to take advantage of the constant rain after the disaster struck to have a reliable and most importantly clean source of water for the victims. I struggled with the end design of this product for weeks having many restraints to take under consideration such as pricing, weight, portability, and function. The end design came to be cheap, easy to use and set up design that functioned with little to no effort.

i feel like i achieved the goals of the assignment and produced a functioning and cheap product for the bangladesh people and all other disaster affected areas. One thing that could be improved is if the tent manufactures designed this product into the tent itself, this would reduce the need for another product that could be distributed to the victims. The aims of my design were to incorporate the already used triangle shaped tents and if possible trees surrounding them.