PrepHub: Nepal
embedding preparedness infrastructure into traditional Nepali rest houses
Nepal’s 2015 Earthquake, and subsequent aftershocks, killed almost 9000 people while destroying hundreds of thousands of buildings. Among these were hundreds of the traditional Paatis (public pavilions) found throughout the Kathmandu Valley. At the same time much damage was sustained to an already weak water distribution system.
In the Spring of 2016 I worked with the Urban Risk Lab at MIT, supported by the TATA Center for Technology and Design, in the development of a pilot project for the adaptive reuse of the Paati to house micro scale water infrastructure innovations. The aim is to strengthen community resilience by repurposing these existing buildings, embedding within them strategies for preparedness related to water distribution as well as many other functions.
PrepHub Nepal embodies ideas of disaster preparedness with community activity. By embedding smarter systems into the existing Paati PrepHub can function on a day-to-day basis as the Paatis do, a social Hub in the heart of small communities. While in a disaster situation its ability to store and treat water, house supplies and communication infrastructure as well as generate energy via solar technologies allows this common public infrastructure to become a lifeline for its community.
Paatis are traditional public rest houses ubiquitous throughout the Kathmandu Valley.
Often in times of disaster public spaces become community hubs of relief for the provision of supplies and information; moreover in the context of Nepal, this kind of infrastructure has the potential to build resilience on multiple scales and aims to tie into the already existing social and physical structures of the settlement.
Spring 2016
Completed with Hugh Magee and the Urban Risk Lab at MIT
