Marco Tallarida
Patrick Gates
Fanru Wang
Kiran Kashap
Gleb Labazine
Monday, April 18, 2011
Thursday, April 14, 2011
REFLECTION on DISASTERS PROJECT
The project was extremely difficult in the beginning, mainly because Tsunamis are such instantaneous disasters. In the beginning of the project I wanted to focus on response to disasters and life saving during a Tsunami situation. Due to costing and complexity of my products to save a small amount of lives, my designs were not as plausible solutions in a third world country.
With more research put into Sri Lanka after the Tsunami in 2004, there were many hardships caused to people, including Trauma, grief, loss, but most evident issue was health of people. Without health, they could not go on to rebuild their lives and sickness certainly brings only more trauma and more grief to the community. The biggest health problem Sri Lanka(not only Sri Lanka) faced was sanitation. People who lost their home during the disaster were sent to populated relief camps, food and water was quite sufficient to survive the people, but there was not enough toilets. It was also very evident that people were not disposing faeces correctly and excreting in places that cause contamination to fresh water they drink, causing many diseases and illness to people. Main affected demographic was particularly children, who drink from contaminated water sources and contracting sickness and Diarrhea, which leads to death from dehydration.
The project then took me into looking at biodegradable ways to store faeces, or even put human bio-waste to use, such as a biogas digester. My initial design was a collapsible container that can be installed underground to hold human waste. They were stackable and easily transported when a canister is full. The reason I wanted it to be stackable was because it can be easily taken to biogas digesters and fermented by anaerobic bacteria as gas for cooking. But the draw back of that design was transporting bio-waste material is unhygienic and extremely dangerous, and biogas digesters take a long time to digest fuel for an hour of cooking. The finalized concept is all about being back to basic and saving as much materials needed at a cheap cost, designing it with a less complex shape and low profile for cheaper tooling. It is versatile in order to mount any conventional toilet over the top and instead of a hard plastic canister, bio waste is contained in a flexible lining which molds to any hole shape and the whole system safely biodegrades.
This project indeed was a challenge, it was a race against time, but I enjoyed designing for real life situations and designing to ease a country’s post disaster conditions and improving their sanitation and hygiene
Julian Chow z3288968
With more research put into Sri Lanka after the Tsunami in 2004, there were many hardships caused to people, including Trauma, grief, loss, but most evident issue was health of people. Without health, they could not go on to rebuild their lives and sickness certainly brings only more trauma and more grief to the community. The biggest health problem Sri Lanka(not only Sri Lanka) faced was sanitation. People who lost their home during the disaster were sent to populated relief camps, food and water was quite sufficient to survive the people, but there was not enough toilets. It was also very evident that people were not disposing faeces correctly and excreting in places that cause contamination to fresh water they drink, causing many diseases and illness to people. Main affected demographic was particularly children, who drink from contaminated water sources and contracting sickness and Diarrhea, which leads to death from dehydration.
The project then took me into looking at biodegradable ways to store faeces, or even put human bio-waste to use, such as a biogas digester. My initial design was a collapsible container that can be installed underground to hold human waste. They were stackable and easily transported when a canister is full. The reason I wanted it to be stackable was because it can be easily taken to biogas digesters and fermented by anaerobic bacteria as gas for cooking. But the draw back of that design was transporting bio-waste material is unhygienic and extremely dangerous, and biogas digesters take a long time to digest fuel for an hour of cooking. The finalized concept is all about being back to basic and saving as much materials needed at a cheap cost, designing it with a less complex shape and low profile for cheaper tooling. It is versatile in order to mount any conventional toilet over the top and instead of a hard plastic canister, bio waste is contained in a flexible lining which molds to any hole shape and the whole system safely biodegrades.
This project indeed was a challenge, it was a race against time, but I enjoyed designing for real life situations and designing to ease a country’s post disaster conditions and improving their sanitation and hygiene
Julian Chow z3288968
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