Envisioning the Future of a Living Self-Transforming Approach for Effective Post-Disaster Relief Shelters

Abstract

The increasing frequency and severity of natural disasters globally necessitate more effective post-disaster shelter strategies. Current approaches, particularly Transitional-shelters in camps, face significant challenges, including delays, rushed constructions, and over-reliance on external resources, leading to high costs, compromised quality, and diminished satisfaction. This study addresses these issues by integrating living material technology into post-disaster Transitional-shelter strategies, proposing the Living Self-Transforming Disaster Relief (LSTDR) shelter approach. Grounded in a critical realist philosophy and employing the Research Onion framework for futures studies, this research adopts a foresight approach and employs qualitative and quantitative techniques across three phases: Ideation (via SWOT analysis, and focus group), Validation (via workshop, and descriptive statistical analysis), and Formulation (via thematic analysis). The findings are synthesized into a holistic LSTDR-shelter success framework supporting interdisciplinary co-biodesign processes. The framework aligns findings for key shelter elements including program, structure, materials, microorganisms, and user adaptability, with the established critical factors of time, quality and cost. The findings reveal that the LSTDR-shelter, through incremental growth and self-adaptation via the integration of living materials, biodesign, and synthetic biology, offers significant promise in enhancing sustainability, self-adaptability, efficiency, and user self-sufficiency with less dependency on external resources. The research underscores the importance of proactive integration, technological advancements, structural resilience, interdisciplinary stakeholder engagement, community acceptance and ethical considerations. The study contributes to knowledge by establishing a holistic framework outlining future success visions and challenges for the LSTDR-shelter approach, highlighting the revolutionary potential of living technologies and biodesign in Transitional-shelter strategies and interconnecting biodesign experts, beneficiaries, and stakeholders to co-biodesign a novel solution for disaster relief. The research concludes with a call for further interdisciplinary studies to expand the findings, ensuring the LSTDR-shelter approach’s effective future implementation.

Date of Award	3 Sept 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Northumbria University
Supervisor	James Charlton (Supervisor) & Meng Zhang (Supervisor)