Vinay Gupta is a man with a novel approach to disaster relief and emergency shelters.

The Red Cross is interested. FEMA is interested.

Does OpenSource architecture and peer-to-peer emergency response hold the key to effectively meeting people’s needs in a disaster?

In an interview with TreeHugger, OpenSource designer Vinay Gupta had this to say:

“The idea that the U.S. might have to handle a city worth of refugees very suddenly shouldn’t be a strange thing to anybody who’s aware of the fact that there is some risk of terrorism on a mass scale. An organization like FEMA really has the responsibility to be able to evacuate a city worth of Americans in 24 hours if they have to be able to do so. That capability had not been developed so it couldn’t be deployed.”

Implementing Gupta’s emergency response plan and simple disaster shelters could develop that capability, working with FEMA, the Red Cross, and other local aid organizations.

Looking at the events surrounding the Katrina disaster, I’d say we really need to have a plan that works next time. The Hexayurt sounds like a phenomenal answer for sheltering displaced people, quickly. It’s a public domain project, OpenSource and ready to be taken to the next level.

A hexayurt is a 166 square foot “microbuilding” assembled from one to

two dozen 4′ x 8′ panels. These panels are typically off-the-shelf

polyisocyanurate building insulation boards, as commonly found at Home

Depot and other building supply outlets for around $15 ea. Harsher

climates and longer term use requirements can be met by custom runs of

this material. The building geometry is extremely simple: the roof is

made from half-panels, and the walls are made from full panels – an

entire building requires only six straight cross-panel diagonal cuts. There

are no framing timbers or other structural components. The pieces are

then joined using an off-the-shelf 6″ wide 600lb breaking strain

industrial box closure tape or a custom adhesive. The entire process –

from panels in a truck to a ﬁnished building – takes about two hours the

ﬁrst time and more like one hour with an experienced team of ﬁve or six.

The design is in the public domain so can be used by anybody.

The Hexayurt (about $200 to build) is only one piece of the puzzle in coping with the emergency needs of displaced people. The rest of the infrastructure (sanitation, power, heat, communications) comes next.

Take 100,000 hexayurts and an open field. Ship no infrastructure and you have an immediate problem: open sewers contaminating any local water supplies you have. People start dying in groups within days. – Vinay Gupta

That infrastructure could cost as little as $100 per unit. With composting (or even bucket) toilets, a shared solar power source with rechargers for batteries, solar water pasteurizers, solar hot water, and wood gasification stoves for heating, the temporary shelter becomes less of a hardship and more of a home base for the families.

This PDF shows the details of the Hexayurt Infrastructure system: TIDES – Infrastructure

Download this PDF for a closer look at Hexayurts for disaster relief: Pentagon Presentation

Peer-to-Peer Emergency Response – Disastr

Disastr is a simple, clear, logical proposal for evacuating whole cities in the event of terrorism or natural catastrophe. It is a last ditch sheltering solution for hundreds of thousands to tens of millions. We may never need this plan, but if we do, it may save lives one day. It relies on peer-to-peer disaster relief and commercial supply chains to provide housing, and the power of the network to coordinate relief efforts. There is an opportunity for a major tech company (Amazon, Google, Yahoo etc.) to provide this service using their redundant computer clusters. Disastr has no official status, but has been positively reviewed by the American Red Cross and FEMA.

Networked Domestic Disaster Response is a low cost approach to handling millions or tens of millions of domestic refugees in the event of a natural disaster, epidemic, industrial accident, WMD or other event.

Read the plan, Hexayurt mass evacuation, at Appropedia. Add to it.

Build your own Hexayurt.

The plans are in the public domain, and available free: Hexayurt schematics

Learn how to build a Hexayurt for Burning Man.

Vote for the Hexayurt in Google’s Project 10 to the 100th.

Check out The Open Toolbox:

The Open Toolbox is a consulting group that utilizes the power of open source to create solutions that build life-embracing communities at all levels of economic welfare and risk exposure. Life-embracing communities are equipped to take care of their citizens during normal economic situations, economic hardship, and crisis and/or disaster conditions. In life-embracing communities, resilience in times of crisis is built on a foundation of stability, integrity and forward planning at all levels.

Visit the Open Architecture Network:

One billion people live in abject poverty. Four billion live in fragile but growing economies. One in seven people live in slum settlements. By 2020 it will be one in three. We don’t need to choose between architecture or revolution. What we need is an architectural revolution. The U.N. Millennium Development Goals aim to “achieve improvement in the lives of 100 million slum dwellers by the year 2015.” Reaching this goal will require a profoundly new approach to improving the built environment. The Open Architecture Network aims to be just such a catalyst for change.

Join the Open Sustainability Network: Global Swadeshi

If you have skills to share in any of these areas, please join up with one of these groups and jump in! It’s going to take all of us to solve our issues.