Proposing A Deployable Post-disaster Modular Temporary Shelter Using Vernacular Materials

The rapid pace of climate change and global warming in recent years has led to the extensive growth of natural disasters such as wildfires, floods, hurricanes, and earthquakes, and consequently a need for planning to provide settlements for those suffering from consequences of these disasters. Depending on the duration of use and conditions of the residents, these settlements are categorized into four groups: emergency shelters, temporary shelters, temporary housing, and permanent housing. The focus of this research is to propose a modular quick-erect structure as a temporary shelter to provide accommodations for multiple weeks or months after an earthquake. In the first step, samples of existing temporary shelters are evaluated in terms of structural performance, material accessibility, deployability, transportability, and use of space to establish the best practices for designing an operative temporary shelter. Studies show that many of the existing shelters are difficult and time-consuming to transport and assemble and are usually made of heavy materials. Moreover, many of them are not deployable in a configurable geometrical order which makes their transportation even more difficult, and their storage for future use more problematic. In the second step, the research proposes a lightweight, deployable, low-cost, and modular structure based on the criteria studied in the first step. The proposed geometrically-optimized temporary shelter is capable of being placed, repaired, and stored in a short time period by unskilled individuals. Furthermore, using local materials such as wood, stone, and mud to create the foundation of this structure would make it usable in various locations and circumstances. The proposed structure, which can be expanded by adding more space to its ends, consists of scissor-shaped modules of narrow metal ribbons that are easy to pack and assemble.