Cultural sustainability and resilient construction
This year, with the goal of building a sustainable and resilient community, we adopted the villages of Shuiyuan and Fushui near National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (NTUST) as an experimental site. We implemented a community disaster prevention and relief plan on the site and introduced the preservation, renewal, and repurposing of historical heritage and spaces to the community to strengthen the bond between it and its residents.
For the sustainable operation of the site, NTUST and its students worked in supporting roles to provide assistance to the community in organizing a disaster prevention association. The roles of the association encompassed disaster preparedness, warnings and evacuation during disasters, and post-disaster recovery. Using disaster prevention and relief as the medium, we engaged community residents in the disaster prevention association and in the renewal and repurposing of their historical and cultural heritage, in the hope that residents would become familiar with one another and identify with the village culture.
The community’s disaster prevention system was designed with reference to two main directions: software and hardware. For the software aspect, we improved the residents’ disaster prevention awareness, established a disaster prevention database, built a disaster prevention association, designed a disaster prevention map, and organized disaster drills and skill training sessions to promote disaster prevention tasks in the community. Regarding the hardware aspect, which concerned typical disaster prevention designs for communities, we improved disaster prevention equipment and devices; designed evacuation signs; planned evacuation routes, temporary meeting points, and evacuation points; and provided recommendations for future disaster prevention infrastructure. We planned to demonstrate the outcomes of the system’s implementation through designs, improve the community’s capacity for disaster prevention, and enhance residents’ awareness of resistance to and evacuation during disasters.
Remembering the community’s origins: Representing the National Defense Medical Center
Located in the American Bureau of Medical Aid to China (ABMAC) Village of Fushui in Taipei’s Zhongzheng District, the staff dormitory was established by Lu Zhide, the former president of the National Defense Medical Center (NDMC), with the help of the ABMAC to accommodate faculty members. The dormitory witnessed U.S. nongovernmental groups assisting in Taiwan’s medical development in the early period after World War II. With the relocation of the NDMC to Taiwan, many outstanding experts moved to Taiwan and contributed their knowledge to the medical field despite the difficult environment.
The history of the NDMC is a valuable cultural heritage in Taiwan’s medical history. Therefore, through resilient community and disaster prevention education, we seek to deepen the residents’ understanding of the history and architectural characteristics of the NDMC located in the ABMAC Village.
For disaster prevention planning, students from NTUST’s Department of Architecture and Department of Civil and Construction Engineering used 3D printing and aerial mapping techniques to produce a large-scale model of the ABMAC and Shuiyuan Villages. This year, because Anzhai No. 3 in the ABMAC Village has been under renovation, students have dedicated their abilities to recording the renovation progress.
Eliminating barriers and transcending national boundaries with love
We do not only focus on domestic communities. Far away in Nepal, a group of children live in an orphanage constantly threatened by slope disasters. Because of local regulations, limited resources, and limited professional capacity, a slope disaster prevention plan has not been implemented. The rainy season is approaching, and the heavy rain will aggravate the risk of slope disasters. What actions can we take now to mitigate the situation?
The COVID-19 pandemic this year has prevented the NTUST slope disaster prevention task force from conducting a field survey or taking disaster prevention actions in Nepal. However, nature’s threats to the children persist; heavy rain has made the slope teeter on the edge of a landslide. Therefore, the slope disaster prevention task force worked remotely with a partner school in the local area of Nepal to collect on-site data, and NTUST students planned a disaster prevention plan. After months of discussion and communication, preliminary remedial measures were developed that involved directing rainwater runoff—which could potentially lead to disasters—away and preventing the loss of soil strength.
In this time of closed national borders, we have endeavored to secure the shelter for these children. We hope that with love, we can reach beyond barriers.
Public participation and connection with the local area
To effectively integrate diverse and complex disaster prevention information, we started from public participation to develop a community conversational robot, connecting intelligent technologies with the local area. With public participation and the bottom-up force, we expect sustainable and resilient thinking to take root in the community.
We performed environmental diagnosis and collected data through interviews with local residents regarding their needs, creating an information map design for community evacuation and disaster prevention. Combining route navigation with a map and visualized disaster and evacuation information, we produced an intuitive and easy-to-understand communication channel for the exploration of community disaster prevention information.
Gongguan area, which is in Taipei’s southern district, is situated within NTUST faculties’ and students’ living environment. Therefore, in the human–machine interface course, we guided students in developing an intelligent conversational robot for application in disaster prevention and relief as well as in the navigation of historical and cultural heritage. This brings out the community value of intelligent technologies, fulfills NTUST’s responsibility for cultivating college talent, and familiarizes students with the land they live on.
Conclusions
The Gongguan area in Taipei’s southern district contains enriched cultural values of urban villages. NTUST’s implementation of the University Social Responsibility project has boosted the renewal and repurposing of village culture. Furthermore, through the topics of disaster prevention and historical culture, it is expected to prompt interaction among village residents and their identification with the area they live in, thereby taking a step toward a sustainable and resilient city.