Designing a standard sewage network for refugee camps • Hacker News Board

Re: Designing a standard sewage network for refugee camps

#21

Post by ArkVark » Sun, Sep 20, 2020, 4:59 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #6

One might think that the UNHCR should have experts on hand who have ready made designs for sewage, water and electricity in refugee camps, but then one looks at the horrors of Moria and the other "camps" in Greece. It is utterly shameful that people in need depend on volunteers taking care of such basic needs. Thanks, OP.

The illegal immigrants going to Europe are not legitimate refugees - they are overwhelmingly male, of working age, and pool funds from their home villages to pay people smugglers thousands of Euros to get them to Western Europe.

There, they absorb as many taxpayer resources as possible, and work menial cash jobs - sending the proceeds back to their homelands to repay the initial 'investment'.

Its basically a huge scam, an unholy alliance between European elites who want cheap labour and European leftists who want to virtue signal. The average European citizen loses out hugely from the undermining of the labour market, the increase in crime, the destruction of national culture and identity, and the lack of investment into European automation and robotics (since illegal labour is so cheap instead).

This is where these migrants in Greece will end up: https://www.dw.com/en/spains-sea-of-plastic-where-europe-get...

It would be simpler to assume direct control over parts of Africa and farm produce there, as well as providing Universal access for local women to education, contraception and abortion. This would encourage actual long-term development of the region and tackle overpopulation (the root cause of these migration outflows).

Re: Designing a standard sewage network for refugee camps

#22

Post by monaelkass » Sun, Sep 20, 2020, 5:06 PM UTC

paleotrope wrote: post #7

mschuster91 wrote: post #6

One might think that the UNHCR should have experts on hand who have ready made designs for sewage, water and electricity in refugee camps, but then one looks at the horrors of Moria and the other "camps" in Greece. It is utterly shameful that people in need depend on volunteers taking care of such basic needs. Thanks, OP.

The UNHCR wants to move the refugees to destination countries and the local (and national) politicians want the camps gone. The inhabitants of these camps don't want to be there either. None of these groups want the camps to be permanent, so you can see that this type of solution is not wanted or desired. There is a perverse incentive to make the camps "bad" but not "too bad."

Original author here: Yes of course, no one wants that the refugee camps be permanent, but as we can see, the camps are used at least for 5 to 10 years, and this is a long period so the sewage network is one of the most important needs to have in these camps that the people could have a safe life there.

In addition, this project could be also used for any type of camp.

Re: Designing a standard sewage network for refugee camps

#23

Post by monaelkass » Sun, Sep 20, 2020, 5:31 PM UTC

mschuster91 wrote: post #6

One might think that the UNHCR should have experts on hand who have ready made designs for sewage, water and electricity in refugee camps, but then one looks at the horrors of Moria and the other "camps" in Greece. It is utterly shameful that people in need depend on volunteers taking care of such basic needs. Thanks, OP.

I have done this project to help the UNHCR and any other association that is responsible for refugee camps.

Re: Designing a standard sewage network for refugee camps

#24

Post by eloff » Sun, Sep 20, 2020, 5:32 PM UTC

tenuousemphasis wrote: post #19

mdifrgechd wrote: post #16

For this kind of application, I'm a big fan of this idea [1] (there is a more recent example of something similar out of the UK but I can't find it now). It uses a mechanical "flush" mechanism that basically just individually bags the waste and stashes it below the toilet. When full, the bags are pulled out (themselves in a bigger bag) and just taken to the dump. A great alternative to building custom sewer and treat…

From the article, it costs $1 per use. And ends with plastic bags full of (maybe sterilized) human waste being thrown in the trash. This is a solution to what exactly? A lack of Toilet as a Service products?

Dumps are able to handle human waste. That's where diapers go.

$1 seems way too high for plastic, that would definitely come down with volume and competition. You can buy plastic bags in the store for $0.10 each easily.

Re: Designing a standard sewage network for refugee camps

#25

Post by mdifrgechd » Sun, Sep 20, 2020, 5:47 PM UTC

tenuousemphasis wrote: post #19

mdifrgechd wrote: post #16

For this kind of application, I'm a big fan of this idea [1] (there is a more recent example of something similar out of the UK but I can't find it now). It uses a mechanical "flush" mechanism that basically just individually bags the waste and stashes it below the toilet. When full, the bags are pulled out (themselves in a bigger bag) and just taken to the dump. A great alternative to building custom sewer and treat…

From the article, it costs $1 per use. And ends with plastic bags full of (maybe sterilized) human waste being thrown in the trash. This is a solution to what exactly? A lack of Toilet as a Service products?

> A lack of Toilet as a Service products?

Exactly! What do you think a sewer system is? It it literally a subscription to having your poo taken away, by a method requiring huge capital costs, major maintenance, a monopoly operator, etc. It is a concept with lots of room for exploring alternatives.

Re: Designing a standard sewage network for refugee camps

#26

Post by lima » Sun, Sep 20, 2020, 5:52 PM UTC

a5withtrrs wrote: post #12

monaelkass wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Original author here: yes of course, this project should be improved and many other additional services wil be added. I will also study a camp with UDDT to have a less amount of sewage. The camps in my project contain free areas for agriculture, in addition to a school , a police station, and markets so the camp could be 90% independent. This project could be applied for any camp. It is basically studied to be applie…

You should see if you can reach out to the Chaos Computer Club for their Camp conference (in theory, running next in 2023). The distribution of utilities throughout their campsite is quite a logistical challenge. I think your work also assumes a nice flat wide open space that you can work with, whereas in that specific scenario there's other obstacles in the way. Anyway, really cool. Thanks! :)

CCC Camp infrastructure is special, and fun, and definitely a great source of real-world experience. The various infra teams now have a decades of experience scaling it up - water, power, waste, internet, each coming with its own set of challenges. The event is full of engineers, such that the level of overengineering increases year by year - last camp, one team even brought and manned industrial dishwashers as a public service! Same goes for similar non-profit events that build their own infra rather than contracting it out to an expensive events company.

Constraints are very different, obviously - the ground can't be dug up, public toilets and washing stations are sufficient, there's some existing infrastructure to partially rely on, and it only has to work for at most ~2 weeks or so. Still, many of the "lessons learned" could be applicable elsewhere and I wish there was time to document more of it.

Re: Designing a standard sewage network for refugee camps

#27

Post by Animats » Sun, Sep 20, 2020, 6:17 PM UTC

For how the US Army does this, see Field Manual 3-34-471, "Plumbing, Pipe Fitting, and Sewerage", especially the sections on "Field Expedient Systems."[1] The Army has been building camps for a while.

[1] https://www.constructionknowledge.net/public_domain_document...

Re: Designing a standard sewage network for refugee camps

#28

Post by throw0101a » Sun, Sep 20, 2020, 6:17 PM UTC

There seem to be ‘standards’ as to how to build out refugee camps and SOP for various things:

* https://emergency.unhcr.org/entry/45581

* https://emergency.unhcr.org/about

* https://spherestandards.org/handbook/

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Refugee_camp

Even the humble tarp that meets these standards is more ‘advanced’ than it appears:

* https://www.wired.com/2016/01/tarpaulin/

Re: Designing a standard sewage network for refugee camps

#29

Post by nednar » Sun, Sep 20, 2020, 6:24 PM UTC

Who knows more about the tent design shown in figure 15. This looks super versatile, but also hard to repair, build in a factory setting and maybe also unintuitive to set up. I hope this is more useful than it looks. Then it would be great to have such a tent with built in AC and water management.

Re: Designing a standard sewage network for refugee camps

#30

Post by monaelkass » Sun, Sep 20, 2020, 7:08 PM UTC

tomcott wrote: post #2

Thanks for sharing this! I enjoyed reading about the different types of campes. I wonder how self-suistainble wrt to cost can it be? Similar to water recycling in ths ISS

In the camp, we can add a UDDT to reduce the amount of sewage and to help the recycling process. This will not have a big cost. other recycling methods could also be used.