Humanitarian Engineering: technology applied to emergency shelters

It is a proven concept. Essentially, the idea is to create an emergency shelter using innovative technologies such as 4D printing. The key benefits? To enable such structures to be self-assembling, multifunctional and even self-repairing. Patent registration has already been submitted.

Text: Raquel Pires Photo: reserved rights

The large number of people displaced due to conflicts or natural disasters continues to increase exponentially. According to a recent report by the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR), the number of people affected by war, persecution and conflict exceeded the 70 million mark in 2018. “What we are seeing in these figures is further confirmation of a longer-term rising trend in the number of people needing safety,” says the report.

Besides the shocking statistics, time is also a crucial factor and always in short supply in a serious emergency: in moments of crisis when practically everything fails, it is necessary to create structural solutions that can be more effective than canvas tents and makeshift structures erected by the locals.

In what may well be the first attempt to solve this issue, student Alice Costa is leading a research project set up within the Master’s degree in Industrial and Product Design run by the Faculties of Engineering (FEUP) and Fine Arts at the University of Porto. As Alice explains, the initiative is essentially based on “innovative technologies such as 4D printing, where it is possible to develop 3D structures using materials with memory that can later react to environmental stimuli such as water, light and heat”. She underlines that fact that “unlike 3D printing, which is static, the time factor adds a 4D dimension, with the result that structures can be self-assembling, multifunctional or even self-repairing”.

A demonstration of this process, at an appropriate scale, was undertaken by means of printing with filaments, namely polylactic acid (PLA) and shape-memory polymers (SMP), successfully validating the concept of potentially applying 4D printing using SMP filaments in the development of structures that are easy to transport and set up in emergency situations.

Alice Costa’s research has been guided by Jorge Lino, deputy director of the Master’s in Industrial and Product Design in collaboration with António Torres Marques and Bárbara Rangel, both researchers and professors working at FEUP’s Design Studio. Alice’s work has validated an innovative concept with regard to the assembly of emergency kits in a humanitarian crisis situation and, at the same time, makes suggestions for improving the properties “of specific rigidity and strength that can be obtained with the use of composite materials”.