Resilience in a Box
Imagine a structure providing clean drinking water, electricity, internet connectivity, medical services and information on sustainable practices to the community. It’s made of modified shipping containers with solar panels and clean batteries for storing energy that can easily be deployed after a disaster or, in a severe weather event like a hurricane, be quickly dismantled, safely stores, and then rapidly reassembled after the storm has passed.
Imagine if an island like Puerto Rico had a network of 300 such hubs, which use the basic Intelligent Water Aid Technology (IWAT) design of Hungarian inventor Zsolt Zombori. The hubs would be strategically located around the island, serving as life-savers during times of crisis, but also as climate action hives and community centers for people to learn about renewable energy and sustainable practices during normal times.
Now imagine 100,000 such hubs around the world, in the communities you and everyone else around the world live in — affluent towns, refugee centers, rural villages, in the parking lots of big apartment complexes — that are ready for emergencies but also can be helping build awareness and fostering new career pathways for folks interested in being part of the solution.
The basic idea is not exactly new. A decade ago a group of students at the University of Colorado at Boulder, Colorado had a brainstorm for their design for their entry for the solar decathlon competition: transform shipping containers into 21st century buildings for living and work adding solar panels and related technology.
They didn’t win the competition that year — Technische Universität Darmstadt won that year. But the University of Colorado design was displayed at the Democratic National Convention in Colorado the following summer. The heat exchange unit used to cool the building through evapotranspiration in the sweltering heat of the summer was so efficient that ice started to build up on the pipes. Everyone who experienced it got a glimpse of the future, which is here now, enhanced by Zsolt Zombori’s IWAT design.
Think about where you might want to have one of these beauties in your community and who you might involved, and then get to work. We only need another 99,999!
