Problem:
Local government units (LGUs) often rely on public buildings such as gymnasiums and schools to serve as makeshift temporary shelters during calamities. These buildings are not designed to handle the needs of hundreds to thousands of evacuees including persons with disabilities, the elderly, women, and children. Even worse, the ratio of usable public buildings to the population in urban ce
nters like Metro Manila is in the range of 3,000 to 81,000 persons per building (Cajucom et al., 2019). This means that public buildings are packed with big crowds in times of natural disasters. And evacuees often have to suffer through dehumanizing conditions involving sanitation. These problems can be addressed by using outdoor temporary shelters that are actually designed to be temporary living spaces as rapid disaster response. However, the temporary shelters that are available in the Philippines are expensive and are difficult to transport. On average these shelters cost around 15,000 pesos per square meter and are made of heavy and specialized materials that require huge amounts of storage spaces. Solution:
Domestiks is an outdoor modular temporary shelter that is cost-effective and is designed for use during natural disasters. Domestiks has a characteristic dome shape that provides it with excellent resistance to wind and rain. It has a modular geodesic frame that allows it to be a light-weight, structurally stable structure that requires no internal support. It is also equally supported on all sides, providing it with better earthquake resistance than most conventional box type shelters. Finally, its framework is made from plastic waste, which allows it to minimize material costs without compromising its strength.
