#HTE

Disaster-Proofing Cities At The Neighborhood Level

In an era of rapidly densifying population centers, a disaster has the ability to impact more people at once than ever before. Large scale infrastructure and safety systems often take decades to implement, so how do we build community resilience in the meantime? 

The PREPhub project was recently submitted by Jongwan Kwoon, whose team worked on the subject as a part of a collaboration between the Urban Risk Lab at MIT’s School of Architecture and Planning and MIT’s Lincoln Laboratory. 

First implemented on campus, PREPhubs are designed to be permanently installed units that beautify public spaces and hold or distribute services to residents in need. They provide an off-grid source of electricity and other amenities, while also acting as a meeting space. When installed at regular intervals throughout a city, these hubs would make a network of known gathering areas, a series of places to power personal devices, and could be used to store water or other emergency resources. 

The current prototypes are built around tough modular blocks, which can be configured differently for different spaces and needs. The core pieces include solar panels, amplifiers, emergency lighting, charging ports, and unique location identification, all wrapped in a fairly cool plastic casing. Other features include information display screens, visual communication (photo/video), neighborhood resource map, and pedal-powered DC generators. 

In day-to-day use they would function as benign public structures with a secondary message about personal/familial preparedness. In crisis they would be easily recognized points to connect with other survivors, meet up with aid providers, or distribute evacuation information. 

Designs for larger units could incorporate more essential services like water purification, cooking supplies, consumable goods, first aid materials, and sanitation. 

Even in their pared down form, these seem to offer what most neighbors would be seeking in the immediate aftermath of any kind of disturbance: electricity, information, and the ability to connect with family and community members. The number of creatively incorporated services is interesting and humane, and the designs seem both idealistic and reasonable. 

These appear to acknowledge both basic human needs and the physical uncertainty of life in an urban environment. While the destructive creativity of citydwellers is hard to overstate, some good engineering could make these hubs vital resources before, during and after a crisis. Kudos to these teams. I’d love to see more effort to implement this kind of preemptive resource in cities, and bonus points if they look this good. 

Members of the Urban Risk Lab team: Miho Mazereeuw, David Moses, Justin Lavallee, Seungho Park, Jongwan Kwon, Aditya Barve, Saeko Nomura Baird, Elizabeth Yarina, Abraham Quintero, and Ananya Nandy. The Lincoln Laboratory team members: Adam Norige, Brice Maclaren, Christopher Budny,Tom Smith, Ed Orchanian, Peter Klein, and Andrew Weinert.