Over 5.5 million people in China have been left homeless by the earthquake, 400,000 people by the flooding in Sri Lanka, and many many more are displaced by natural disasters or regional conflicts every year so the demand for temporary shelters is huge. This Pallet House is a sustainable & innovative approach to transitional relief housing.
How do you take care of hundreds of thousands of disaster refugees? It's not like you can plop down a coal power plant and fire it up wherever it's needed. Or can you? Andrew Leinonen has put together a strong concept design for an airship covered in solar panels that can be flown into a disaster area, anchored in, and immediately begin to serve power to the rescue effort.
A lively and sometimes scrappy debate on whether global warming is fueling bigger and nastier hurricanes like Katrina is adding an edge to a gathering of forecasters here.
Asia was hardest-hit by natural disasters last year that worldwide killed more than 16,500 people and caused $62.5 billion in damage, a U.N.-backed research group said on Friday.
