Disaster-adaptive homes: Incorporating DRR in interior design

I visited the UPIDAA‘s IDisenyo exhibit at SM City Marikina yesterday. It was a showcase of interior design entries under the theme KalamIDad: Interior Design in Times of Calamity. I was curious to see how disaster risk reduction could be incorporated into the practice of interior design, and the exhibit was a very good learning experience.

Perspectives and material samples from the entry TAHAN-NAn.

 

Disaster Games and Learning Activities

I took up Geography 255 (Environmental Hazards and Disasters) as my last elective under the Environmental Track for MA URP, and it was one of the best learning experiences I’ve had in UP Diliman. Our class was composed of our hardcore prof, Dr. Jake Rom Cadag, and a mix of wacky PhD and MA students.

In the course of our subject, we tackled so many concepts that revolved around hazards and disasters, among them vulnerability, risk, perception, awareness, and so on. It was up to us as students to read up on related literature and explore how these concepts could be understood in class. We came up with activities and games for these concepts, each one with the goal of creatively extracting insights from each student. These activities can be reused by DRR practitioners and other students and everyone who wants to use them in classes, workshops, and team-building sessions. Here’s the compilation:

Buklod Tao: Community-based Disaster Risk Reduction Practices

27 September—My Geography 255 class, which is all about environmental hazards and disasters, visited Buklod Tao. The visit was a wonderful learning experience, and it gave me a very good perspective of community planning and a grassroots approach to disaster risk reduction and management.

Buklod Tao welcome banner

Pushing DRRM forward in the Philippines: Project NOAH’s open data, real time use, and a look on human behaviour

“We have our data. It’s open. We teach you how to use it, so in times of danger, you know what to do. But the problem is the Filipino’s willingness to learn about disaster risk. There are 10.2 million tweets on Aldub, but there are less than a hundred thousand downloads of the NOAH mobile app.” – Dr. Mahar Lagmay

Dr. Mahar Lagmay during the NOAH DRR Workshop

Yesterday, I was lucky enough to be part of the third out of the four DRRM workshops held by Project NOAH to teach the mass public how to use the NOAH websites and tools for DRRM. It brought together disaster risk reduction practitioners from both the government and development organisations at UP-NIGS, and you can still catch the last one on the 5th of October, 2015. Check out the NOAH blog or contact their staff at info@noah.dost.gov.ph for more information.