QSAND Case Studies

Application in Nepal

Two major earthquakes struck Nepal in Spring 2015, with the first on the 25th April with a 7.8 magnitude and followed on the 12th May with a 7.2 magnitude quake. A total of 8,857 people died as a direct result of these disasters, and over 6 million people were affected.

In Gorkha district the earthquakes were particularly devastating. Many villages were affected, with buildings either partially or completely destroyed. CRS and their local implementing partners recognised both the need for quick emergency relief and for a long-term plan to secure the livelihoods of the communities that were worst affected. For that reason, they chose to implement QSAND to help ensure that shelter reconstruction met the needs of the local population and was led by community members who would maintain these structures in the future.

View the full case study here

Application in the Philippines

Super Typhoon Haiyan, known locally as Yolanda, struck the Philippines in November 2013. It is considered one of the strongest typhoons ever recorded with Category 5-equivalent and five to six-meter storm surges at landfall. It left neighbourhoods and infrastructure in ruins with over 1.1 million houses destroyed or damaged and over 12 million people affected.

Among the most devastated areas was the coastal district of Anibong in Tacloban, on Leyte island, where the super typhoon washed away or destroyed the vast majority of houses and local infrastructure. CRS, and its local partner Caritas Philippines, have been responding to the disaster since November 2013. The Anibong Resettlement Project (ARP) supports almost 900 of the most vulnerable families from the Anibong community to restore the lives and livelihoods in a safe, sustainable, and dignified new community. In the early stages of the ARP CRS used QSAND to support their sustainability and resilience planning and implementation activities.

View the full case study here

The Humanitarian Demonstration Shelter

Providing shelter for displaced people and families is one of the first critical components of disaster relief. Shelters need to be designed for resilience, rapid construction and deployment, but also crucially able to make use of local skills, labour and materials. It is with this in mind that CRS and BRE collaborated to create a demonstration of the techniques and materials that can be used to create an effective humanitarian shelter.

The collaboration between BRE and CRS is designed to create a focal point for demonstration and research into the provision of humanitarian shelter, with a view to building upon this foundation in the future. The shelter itself is designed to act as a stimulus for wider research and understanding on issues such as climate change resilience and sustainability.

View the full case study here

Shelter Build - Time Lapse

Watch a time lapse of the building of the shelter here at BRE Watford by volunteers from CRS and BRE

Take a VR tour of Eklephant Village in Nepal!

This tour is one of the exhibits in the demonstration shelter on BRE’s Innovation Park in Watford, and showcases some of the reconstruction interventions that took place in Nepal following the 2015 earthquake.

Take the tour here