Coastal communities, particularly Pacific Islanders, face significant challenges from repeated typhoons and tsunamis. The Collapsible Shelter Initiative targets these groups, providing transportable shelters to withstand such disasters. Coupled with a community-based disaster risk mitigation and preparedness strategy, it aims to empower islanders and enhance their resilience.

The design embraces local construction methods, featuring collapsibility that aligns with regional practices and boosts acceptance. The use of abundant green materials poses no harm and could support the local economy if scaled. The collapsible design enables the production of prefab kits in workshops, improving transportability. In the Philippines, the initiative seeks to partner with local women’s carpentry workshops, creating job opportunities for female graduates from carpentry training centers and promoting their empowerment in the construction sector. An environmentally friendly supply chain strategy should be integrated into the program to prevent adverse effects on the environment, while a community outreach strategy will help achieve the desired outcomes.

The initiative was aimed at Tanuan and Tacloban, Philippines, in response to the post-Haiyan/Yolanda typhoon in October 2013. However, funding was diverted due to an ebola emergency, leaving the project incomplete. Two pilot shelters and prototypes were presented to humanitarian shelter experts, cluster coordinators, local government officials, and community members. Although the University of Eastern Samar and Eastern Visayas remained involved, the project ultimately ended in 2014 without being completed. The local partner organization Green Mindanao can assist in monitoring the physical conditions and community perspectives at the demonstration sites.

The collapsible sheltering solution aims to support:

1. coastline communities facing repeated disasters;
2. informal settlements in urban centers;
3. reducing the humanitarian investment in protracted crises.

Repeated loss of shelters due to reoccurring typhoons, tsunami and sea-level rise, specifically in the Pacific region, triggered the designer to explore an economical and easy-to-replicate, localized, appropriate, dignified, portable and transportable, rapidly collapsible and upgradable solution to address the humanitarian situation. The design has the following features:

• rapid collapsing time of about 2-3 hours.
• quick and easy to build, detach and rebuild.
• portability and transportability through the use of collapsible panels.
• attuned to local practices.
• no skilled labour is required in collapsing and rebuilding the structure.
• use of local materials such as nipa shingles, amakan and coco lumber.
• no sophisticated materials and contraptions are involved.
• no extraordinary costs are required.

The communities should be self-sufficient in fighting the disaster by transporting the existing shelters and prepositioning the shelter kits for the displaced people.