Disaster-resilient school design in the Philippines

Maricris Irene V. Tamolang in the Philippine Daily Inquirer: While some schools in the Philippines serve as evacuation centers in times of calamities, none are especially designed to adapt to and withstand natural disasters. Like other structures vulnerable to tropical storms, schools get damaged or worse, destroyed, depriving evacuees the safety they most need.

To address this problem, three incoming senior architecture students at the University of the Philippines Diliman came up with a climate-adaptive and disaster-resilient school design strong enough to survive supertyphoons like “Yolanda.”

With inputs from the group’s adviser, Nicolo del Castillo, “Taklob,” which means cover (derived from the word “Tacloban”), topped the school category of “Build Forward,” a competition sponsored by a property developer. The team members modeled Taklob after the structural design of a bridge introduced in their Architectural Structures IV class last semester, said Rafael Khemlani, who suggested the idea.

This model mainly accounted for the arches and cable wires that replaced the conventional columns in most construction projects, he said. Each classroom has an area of 76.5 sq m. It has a restroom and an evacuation supply storage—both located at the rear side—and doors at both ends of the front side. The floor is elevated 1 meter from the ground to prevent damage from storm surges.

...“We won’t call it a green design because the main element used is mostly steel,” Mervin Afan said. “But it is sustainable because of its tropical feature, allowing air to pass through easily. It is climate-adaptive because of its flexibility. During hot days, you can leave the storm shutters open and when the rainy season sets in, you can keep them closed.”...

A Philippine resident sits outside of his home in the aftermath of Super Typhoon Haiyan. US military photo

Philippines flood victims, children want schools

Terra Daily via AFP: Flood evacuees and pupils competed for space in southern Philippine schools Wednesday, with both wanting to use the buildings following the Christmas break, officials said.

In some cases, survivors of last month's floods from Tropical Storm Washi were moved to alternative shelters as children returned to schoolhouses that had been used as evacuation centres.

But in other instances, hundreds of the evacuees refused to leave, forcing school officials to find novel ways of conducting classes.

In one school in Cagayan de Oro, it was the students who had to move to tents because the storm victims refused to vacate their classrooms, said district school official Shirley Merida.

"We will have to hold these sessions inside the tents since all of our classrooms still have evacuees living in them. We cannot just drive them away," she said...

UN and Pakistan launch ‘Resilient Cities and One Million Safe Schools and Hospitals campaign’

South Asian News Agency: The United Nations and [Pakistan's] National Disaster Management Authority launched the “Resilient Cities and One Million Safe Schools and Hospitals campaign” in Islamabad here on Saturday. The campaign will focus on public awareness on disaster preparedness and disaster risk reduction and aimed at creating a demand for building safer schools and hospitals.

Addressing the ceremony, Leader of the House in the Senate Syed Nayyar Hussain Bukhari said with such kind of campaigns and other policy directions, the government will ensure that the schools and hospitals remain functional even during disaster.

Chairman National Disaster Management Authority said the launching of this campaign in Pakistan will add a new chapter in the disaster management system to make our cities safer, resilent and livable in the wake of disasters.

Special Representative of the UN Secretary General on Disaster Risk Margareta Wahlstrom appreciated Pakistan’s initiative to launch the campaign saying the social impact of such initiatives goes beyond the effects of disasters. She said one million safe schools and hospitals campaign is a global advocacy initiative to make schools and hospitals safer...

AlKhadim Memorial Hospital, shot by Talha, Wikimedia Commons, under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license