Shelter from Climate

A combination of climate and geographic location expose Uganda to a wide array of natural disasters such as: droughts, famine, epidemics, diseases, floods, land-slides, hail storms, crop pests / diseases, and earthquakes. In addition, man-made disasters are prevalent, such as: conflict, wars and internal displacement, fires, transport accidents, and environmental degradation. The combination of these challenges prove to be detrimental in regards to the millions of people residing in Uganda. Many adjacent countries also are facing current conflicts; people from South Sudan, Rwanda, Tanzania, Kenya, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, are forced to flee, many finding refuge in Uganda. Uganda, a country that faces internal issues of its own, now faces dire need for temporary and permanent housing for both its refugees and citizens.

Exel Composites is a company who provide struggling countries with materials for such temporary and permanent housing. “Recently, Exel Composites was selected to provide 10,000 lightweight, durable, composite shelters to refugee families around the world by the UN Refugee Agency.” Excel Composites is collaborating with Housing for All Foundation by the IKEA foundation to design and apply to bring safety to refugee populations. The lightweight composite steel frame of the walls, roof and flooring provide an expected lifespan of three years and the availability to disassemble and assemble when needed.

Global Housing Solutions (GHS) designs and delivers for a lightweight mobile house system. In March 2015, GHS was able to start its own temporary house system of sandwich panels to be assembled into a modular dimension. According to GHS, “The design engineers developed a system that ensures assembly within just 40 minutes, and neither tools nor specific knowledge are required for erecting them on site… All parts are supplied prefabricated.” GHS wished to make the process as simple as possible. Therefore this technology reduces construction time, makes for easier constructability, and reduces the commonly unavailable modern tools many prototypes call for.

The United States has many personnel, from a variety of entities, trying to develop designs to factor into places of need like Uganda. Peter Anthony, for example, has a design for a collapsible, lightweight composite house for emergency need. He is working with reinforced plastics material in modular use that can be assembled quickly, as well as stored and transported easily, “The composite panel material is waterproof and carries an aged thermal resistance value of 6–6.5 per inch.” Anthony also states that the need in temporary housing should be composite materials instead of the over-used and less effective tent housing. “In many cases, current disaster relief relies on tents that lay on the ground and are fabricated from materials that offer immediate protection from the elements, but do not serve as a practical option for the one to sometimes two years they will be in service while awaiting more permanent housing.” As of 2015, Anthony’s proposal for shelters can be manufactured for under $1,500 U.S. dollars.

Unlike Peter Anthony, ShelterBox uses the tent design and other essential tools and kits to provide quick access to families in need of rebuilding. The tent is custom made by Vango, a leading manufacturer, to withstand weather (high to low) situations and provide security and privacy. Two examples include, OASE tent who is a smaller and lighter design with the FLEX 3 tent offers a chimney for countries in cooler climates. Each ShelterBox contains its own repair kit in case of issues with the tent structure.