Assignment: Flood Disaster Shelter Design

Climate Change Mini Design Challenge: Flood Disaster Shelter Design

Climate Change Mini Design Challenge:

An emergency and disaster relief organization has hired you to design a solution for a flood disaster shelter for a family of four (4) people (2 adults and 2 children).

When beginning a biomimicry design challenge, ask yourself:

• What does the solution need to do?
• What's the context?
• What functions are relevant to the challenge?
• Then, AskNature...

Let's get started...

Your Assignment

Start with the design challenge (or problem). What does the solution need to do? In other words, what are the functional challenges?

The disaster will meet the following functional challenges (this will also give you some context for your design).

It will need to:

• keep the family dry by providing waterproof protection
• provide structural protection of the family from winds, rain, storms, etc.
• provide UV protection from the sun
• be easy to assemble in an disaster/emergency situation (under stressful conditions and in extreme weather)
• be reusable
• be lightweight
• be durable
• be highly visible for search and rescue scenarios

Your assignment:

• CHOOSE ONE of the functional challenges (listed above) to be the focus of your mini design challenge.
• GO TO AskNature (Links to an external site.).
• CLICK ON "EXPLORE" ---> this will take you to the Biomimicry Taxonomy (Links to an external site.)
• TRANSLATE the functional challenge into ONE FUNCTION only (...see next 3 steps to do this.)
  
• USE the BIOMIMICRY TAXONOMY to select the Functional Group (1st Level; i.e., maintains physical integrity)
• USE the BIOMIMICRY TAXONOMY to select the Functional Sub-Group (2nd Level; i.e., manage structural forces)
• USE the BIOMIMICRY TAXONOMY to select the Function (3rd Level; i.e., compression). This is your function.
• USE ASKNATURE to find an inspiring biological strategy that gives you ideas for a flood shelter design that will meet the functional challenge that you have selected (don't go too deep; just learn enough to understand how the biological strategy can be applied to you design to meet the functional challenge.)
• BRAINSTORM potential ways to DESIGN your flood shelter by incorporating the biological strategy you discovered to meet the functional challenge.
• HAVE FUN!
• SKETCH your design concept for a flood shelter design that will meet your selected design feature (functional challenge). You can use a design software program if you prefer or else sketch on paper and scan it. Don't worry if you can't draw! Use your imagination. You can use paints, markers, colored pencils, fabric, magazine cut-outs, etc., to embellish your sketch.
• CREATE AN IMAGE of your sketch.
• WRITE a short paragraph that includes the following information:

A 1-paragraph description of:

1. Tell us what FUNCTIONAL CHALLENGE you selected. (EXAMPLE: provide structural protection of the family.)
2. Tell us what the Functional Group > Functional Subgroup > Function was for your design. (EXAMPLE: maintains physical integrity > manages structural forces > compression)
3. The name of the biological organism/system that inspired your design. (EXAMPLE: horses/vertebrates)
4. The link to the AskNature strategy page that inspired you. (EXAMPLE: Bones self-heal: vertebrates (Links to an external site.))
5. A sentence about your design: how your flood shelter design works to meet the functional challenge. (EXAMPLE: I designed a flood shelter that was self-healing. When punctured or ruptured, the shelter will "remodel" itself by pulling materials from the rest of the shelter to create a new barrier to repair the hole.)

For this assignment, try to rein your design in at 30% creative and 70% reality.

STUDENT WORK EXAMPLE

I thought I would give you an example of past student work for this assignment. Please note that in this example, the student had a packaging design challenge -rather than a shelter design challenge. The structure and outcomes of the assignment are the same, however. Intended for example purposes only.