This project brings an alternative communication network solution in unexpected natural disaster scenarios, in my case, earthquakes. Design solution I am proposing here consists of an app interface for the disaster victims and an underlying communication network solution that can self-sustain by building a mesh network between the mobile devices that are in the disaster area. This new network comes into play when the existing internet or GSM network fails. Aim of this project is to strengthen the communication between the citizens themselves as well as between the citizens and the governments civil defense organizations. I was inspired to work on this topic as my home country, Turkey, is prone to earthquakes and has suffered multiple disasters in the past. Personally, I have great motivation to introduce design solutions in the area of natural disasters because I believe there is great potential to improve, and every step is important in the way to create a prepared society, social systems and governments. To do that, I have used multiple design tools during the project. Research phase started with Gigamapping, and semi-structured interviews were held with people that have been in an earthquake scenario, one of them being a rescue personnel. I used the initial gigamap as a reference during the interviews to make it easy for the attendants to visualize and propose solutions. Those solutions and then used to generate first concepts and follow up interviews were used to get feedback on the concepts. The final design solution was shaped after the feedback sessions. Materials used in this project was mainly limited to digital, this is due to nature of the project as well as the global pandemic that was taking place while this project were in progress. Interviews were held through video and audio calls, also screensharing and digital whiteboard were used. I think this project has an advantage of timing, digitalization is very on demand currently and I believe the design solution explored here has the potential to attract attention of the right organizations.
Year
2021
Student
Giray Çep
Project
Design for Disaster Preparedness: A Self-Sustained Communication Network
Contact
Supervisor
Bente Skjelbred
Tagged
App, communication, disaster, network, solutions
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