Temporary Modular Emergency Response Shelter

An easily-deployable emergency response shelter has always been a necessity in times of civil unrest and natural disasters. From hurricanes and floods to protests and war-torn cities, an emergency response shelter can be deployed in a wide variety of different scenarios to support victims and provide aid to the surrounding population. However, historically these shelters have been hard to transport, difficult to set up, inefficient at providing care to a larger group of people, and extremely expensive. With this project, I aimed to design a temporary emergency response shelter that could operate efficiently, be easily transported and deployed, and be cost-effective.

To build a standard emergency response shelter, the supplies required are as follows:

1. 20-foot shipping container
2. 2 pneumatic hood struts
3. 4 heavy duty steel hinges
4. LED light bars
5. 30 square feet of plywood
6. 2 metal shelf brackets
7. Sheet metal Red Cross logos
8. 4, 5.5ftx3ft solar panels
9. 40 kWh solar battery
10. Standard medical supplies and equipment

To start out my research, I looked at images of emergency response shelters used in past natural disasters, including the American Red Cross Shelter in South Florida and the Pasco County Shelter for Hurricane Michael victims. I learned about what kinds of materials, equipment, and staff are typically needed to run such a shelter, and what kind of conditions they are usually deployed in. From my initial findings I made a list of project requirements to guide me through the design:

1. The shelter must be easily transported by truck, plane, and boat
2. The shelter must be able to be quickly and simply deployed by the medical staff
3. The shelter must be able to treat a large number of people in a orderly manner
4. The shelter must be able to withstand harsh rain, temperatures, and other natural phenomenon
5. The shelter must be inexpensive to build, and easy to maintain

With those basic design principles in mind, I started out with a basic outline of the emergency response shelter.

I wanted the Emergency Response Shelter to be extremely durable and water-resistant, so that it could be deployed in even the harshest conditions and withstand long-distance transportation. This meant that it couldn't have any exposed components or an easily breakable exterior. After some research on temporary structure architecture, I settled on a design that uses a 20-foot shipping container as the frame of the shelter. Using a shipping container comes with several benefits: there is already a ton of infrastructure dedicated to transporting shipping containers, they are cheap to purchase and can be readily found second-hand, they are extremely durable and purpose-built to withstand transportation and harsh conditions, and it's the perfect size for a medium-sized shelter. I decided that the fully-built shelter wouldn't exceed the original footprint of the shipping container, mainly to make transportation of multiple shelter units easier, as they could be stacked together like regular shipping containers usually are. The shelter would have to be easily accessed by people needing assistance, and it should have an entrance large enough for large medical equipment and stretchers to be taken in and out. I settled on an open-side design, where the long side of the shipping container would rotate up, creating a large entrance that takes up the length of the container. When opened, the container side would then act as a roof, extending the workspace and protecting the inside from the sun and rain. There would also be a set of double doors on the side of the shelter, so it could be accessed without having to open the side panel in case there was limited space. As my research revealed, many times in emergency response situations, there isn't easy access to electricity, which is needed to run lights and medical equipment. To solve a possible electricity shortage, I determined that the shelter should have a solar array mounted on the roof. The panels would provide power to the shelter during the daytime, and a large-capacity battery could store power for operation through the night.

On the inside of the shelter, there would need to be sufficient medical equipment and materials needed to respond to any disaster in which it might be deployed. Thinking about what my local doctor's office looked like, I realized there would need to be space for cabinets and shelving to store the supplies, as well as an open space for an examination bed or a stretcher to be wheeled in. Of course, there would also need to be bright LED lighting for use at nighttime or in stormy conditions, and a control panel to control the lighting and electrical systems.

With these basic design elements in mind, I began creating a 3D model of the shelter in CAD.

For this project, I did the initial CAD model and basic 3D outline in Autodesk Fusion. I have used Fusion for 3D printing projects in the past, and since I was working with some more complex models like the shipping container, which would need mesh editing tools, I knew I would need a more traditional CAD software.

I started with a model of the standard 20-foot shipping container, which I imported into Fusion and scaled proportionally to match its real-life dimensions.

I designed the side panel of the shipping container to swing up and out, so that it could be easily opened from the inside by walking out while pushing up. In hotter environments like deserts and some costal regions, the panel-roof will block sunlight from entering the shelter, decreasing the temperature inside. It also helps protect the equipment and occupants inside of the shelter from any rain, snow, or hail that it might encounter in a natural disaster.

I started by removing one of the sides of the shipping container, and then creating a new component out of it. That let me then create a rotating hinge joint between the panel and the rest of the container, so it could rotate up and out when the shelter is deployed. I set the fully-extended panel to be at a 90-degree angle, for the most protection.

Because the side wall of a standard shipping container can weight over 250 pounds, I wanted there to be an easier way to lift and secure the side panel so that any medical personnel could set up the shelter. I took inspiration from watching my dad fill up the oil on our car, where I saw that the hood had these sort of piston things that made lifting the hood easier. After some research I found that they were called hood struts, and they have many applications when it comes to making heavy objects easier to lift, such as cabinets and large container lids.

I modeled them with a few sketches and extrusions, and fixed them to either side of the shipping container and the side panel at a 45-degree angle for structural strength.

Every single medical office of any kind I have been to has some sort of shelving, so I knew I had to add some here. Nothing fancy, just a large bottom desk for heavy equipment supported by metal brackets for strength, and a top shelf for lighter items like medicine. Both of them are made out of sealed plywood, to be cost-effective and weather-resistant.

I drew a few sketches of the shelves, then dimensioned them accordingly and extruded them. I then modeled the brackets and attached them to the wall of the container.

When there is a natural disaster happening and civilians are dealing with low-visibility conditions as well as any panic they might feel, it helps to have a clear marking to indicate where they can go to receive medical assistance. Taking inspiration from the Red Cross shelters, I added large medical symbols to the sides of the shelter. They are made out of sheet metal and weather-proof paint.

I made these with a pretty simple sketch and extrusion.

Many times when an emergency shelter is deployed, there is no easy access to electricity. Undeveloped areas, power outages, and lack of infrastructure can lead to a shortage of energy when it is needed most, and I knew I had to account for it. I designed the shelter to have 72 square feet of solar panels mounted on the roof, which serve to power all of the lights and medical equipment. However, in some cases, emergency shelters have to be deployed in low-light conditions. Whether it's cloudy and stormy, extremely dusty, or just nighttime, a way to store collected energy for later use is essential for an effective emergency response shelter. I added a 40 kWh solar battery that can charge via the solar panels when there is light, and then serve the shelter. It has a control panel for power management, and connects to a power main for the shelter.

I based the models for the solar panels off a design I found online, and I modeled the battery with the basic tools, and then the sweep tool for the cables.

Now with my model finished, I added the appropriate appearances and materials to the different parts of the shelter.

For just a moment, I wanted to discuss the design principles that I kept in mind while creating the layout for the shelter. I wanted there to be a nice flow throughout the shelter, without crowding and with people being able to move smoothly in and out of the shelter. To achieve that, I added all of the interior elements along one wall, so that people could move almost in a semi-circle direction while walking through care in the shelter. Besides that, I wanted all of the equipment and materials in the shelter to be easily accessed by medical staff. No excessively tall shelves, hard to open cabinets, or things stacked on top of or behind each other. That sentiment is reflected in the final design, where the entire interior of the shelter is easy to access and visible.

Twinmotion is a rendering engine made by Epic Games as a part of Unreal Engine, and it's what I used to make the renders for this project. I chose Twinmotion for the renders because it has a very simple interface compared to other programs like Blender, it has a great selection of assets from it's built-in library, and it it very flexible with file formats. From Fusion I exported all of the different components of my models as OBJ files, and then imported them into Twinmotion using the "import mesh" tool. I reassembled the different models back together in the Twinmotion environment, and then got to work.

I created a scene of a nurse treating a patient while he sits on a operation bed. I added a medical cart and ventilator machine to her left, and a rack of equipment as well as a monitor panel mounted on the wall. The bed has a stand-over table with more equipment and patient-care items, and there is an operation light above for increased visibility.

I then began to fill the shelves with all of the necessary equipment and supplies for a proper emergency response shelter. I stocked the shelves with medicines, ointments, waste bins, oxygen tanks, med kits, diagnostic machines, sanitary disposal boxes, and more. I really like it, as it shows how the scene might look when the shelter is fully deployed and all of it's resources are in use.

On the left side, I added a line of people and a responder assessing their injuries and documenting their medical needs. Often in times of disaster there can be panic and disorder at emergency response shelters, so I wanted the renders to instead portray a calm, efficient, functional way of processing patients. The uniformed man on the left completes a pre-assessment of the incoming patients, and the woman on the right interviews a mother and her son.

A good render starts with a good background environment. Since the emergency response shelter would be in a more rural setting, I wanted the background to be a grassy field with a sunset-type lighting. I started by creating a floor plane, and then added a 3D grass material. Sure it might have made my PC sound like an airplane taking off, but it was totally worth it. I then used the Paint tool to create the foliage. After adding some rocks, weeds, ornamental grasses, and a couple varieties of trees and bushes to the object painting list, I brushed a perimeter of foliage around the deployed shelter. I then picked the "Pink Sunrise" lighting environment, and set up HRDI for the sky. I really like the way that the final renders look with the trees and bushes in the background, and I think it gives a pretty good idea of what it will look like when deployed.

To bring the render to life, I spent a ton of time researching the best settings for light and how to incorporate it into the model. As with my original outline, there are two LED light bars on either side of the shelter to provide light on the inside, as well as making the Red Cross symbols slightly emissive for easier visibility. I raised the reflective index of the back wall material to cast a few more reflections for accuracy, and decreased the reflectiveness of the shipping container so the final images wouldn't be too noisy. For the environment, I decreased the intensity of the natural light to almost zero, so the main shadows would be cast from the LEDs in the shelter. Then, I turned on Ray Tracing. Of course doubled the render times, but wow it made a difference. Now, Twinmotion was calculating a simulated path of each ray of light in the model, and it took the final images to a whole new level of realism. In the comparison images above, you can see the Ray Tracing makes a huge difference: the reflections of the bins on the floor, the glow of the Red Cross sign on the wall on the right, the higher-accuracy shadows on the figures. I set the number of light ray bounces to two so that the images wouldn't get washed out, and with that I was done.

Now it was finally time for the renders!!! I set the camera focal length to 102mm for a photorealistic effect, set auto-exposure, and disables depth-of-field to ensure the whole image was clean and sharp. I increased the "samples per pixel" value to a few thousand to reduce any noise from rendering, and then created my images and added them to the rendering queue. An hour later, they were done, and looking fantastic!!! Some of them I have included in the steps above, and the rest are here below!!!

Here I wanted to demonstrate the modularity of the shelter design. In this render, I created a version of the shelter with only beds, to provide recovery for a larger group of people. Different versions can be coupled together via the double-doors on the side of the container, to create a chain of temporary shelters. I think it makes for a really great temporary structure template, and I have already thought of so many different variations of the shelter that help with specific aspects of the emergency response process, like processing, medicine distribution, emergency operations, and diagnosis.

I really love the way this project turned out, and I hope you did as well! I do see some possible improvements for the future, like more storage and designs for the other modules, and think that with those this could be a super awesome concept design. I've included all of the files below if anyone wishes to check out my work in closer detail, or to tinker with the design on your own .I think this really has potential as a temporary emergency response shelter, and I'm exited to see what the community thinks. Thanks for reading!