Comparative study of design and type of work when assembling cardboard beds for shelters

Abstract

When a disaster strikes, it is an international standard to use make shifts beds in shelters but in Japan, refugees are forced to sleep directly on shelters’ floor for long periods of time. In recent researches, this type of shelter environment was revealed to lead to different secondary health damages or post-disaster related deaths. However, after the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, corrugated cardboard make shift beds began to be used in shelters. Their use can help reduce secondary health damages and improve shelters’ environment. From a few hundred to one thousand disaster victims are expected in large scale shelters but corrugated cardboard beds’ assembly demand an important work load and it is desirable to install them promptly to prevent evacuees to sleep on the floor as much as possible. It is necessary to plan the optimization of beds’ assembly. In precedent cases, beds were installed and assembled with the help of volunteers and there was a tendency for groups to be formed and making assembly a collaborative work. However, the division of labor and cooperative work require time and space and it can be frequently inefficient as the limited manpower, related to the disaster, can be seen as wasted. In this research, we focus on differences in movements for individual work and collaborative work in the process of assembling cardboards beds and use these results to reduce unnecessary movements and to render their assembly and set-up easy and efficient.