Sleep and the potential for disaster relief shelters
Creating a new approach to recovery
Sleep is a powerful influence on health and is a pragmatic response to good health. It is a biological need just like food, water, shelter, and sanitation, but not commonly considered in the design process of housing and shelters. Like other basic human needs, sleep should be considered fundamental to human dignity and essential to survival. While disaster relief situations often calls the sleeping situation temporary it is sometimes not the case. Recovery can take weeks and even months to move out of a evacuation center. I started by looking at how we can change current temporary shelter designs to better suit our sleeping needs. By optimizing the sleeping environment for people who have been displaced by disasters, we can change the way users approach sleep in these situations as a method for proactive healthcare and a pragmatic response to good health and better recovery.
Over 30 million people are displaced by disasters a year. In these desperate situations sleep can have a profound effect on health and adequate shelter with sleep needs in mind is not just ideal but necessary. How users approach sleep should be considered a priority and not an afterthought. Like food, clothing and education, housing is also fundamental to human dignity and essential to life. As we start to approach the problem of disasters and crisis, the key focus should be in promoting sleep as a proactive method of healthcare. If we start with the idea of sleep as a pragmatic response to good health, we can propose to implement a design solution that promotes sleep as a way to positively impact the disaster recovery experience.
The Current Problem
FEMA is a powerful responder in times of post-disaster crisis. FEMA disaster recovery services are vital in the recovery process for survivors of a disaster, but are only established after federal aid is deployed (often days and weeks after the event). The emotional journey of the recovery process can be extremely stressful and people naturally experience trauma and anxiety during a disaster emergency. The key to the solution is how to facilitate people to recover from the psychological disorganization and adapt to the new situation as quickly as possible to contain the damage.
Design Intent
By creating a stable environment for victims, we can empower the community to begin their own recovery process independent of governmental or organizational activity (which can take days and weeks). Targetting NGOs as the key provider of assistance in the first 72 hours, FlexTent is a rapidly deployable, low-cost but effective temporary shelter that is intended to be distributed by local NGOs (such as churches, non profit organizations) to bring better peace of mind to the affected community within 24 hours.
How can we support modes of family recovery following a disaster by providing a private space that enables rehabilitation and recovery as a family unit?
----edit----
How can we empower communities to create stable environments that provide a sense of privacy and community to support modes of family recovery immediately following a disaster??