This document outlines the concept of Disaster-Ready (DR) design, which aims to design everyday products that can also be useful during disasters. The author discusses DR design through several product examples they developed, including "Green Angels" flowerpots containing survival items, "Ring" survival packs that fit inside flowerpots, and "TWO" wallpaper borders that indicate exits in the dark. The latest example presented is "Xtension", a power strip with an internal battery and light that can serve as a flashlight and mobile charger during blackouts. The author argues DR products have advantages over disaster-oriented products in being more widely used and available during emergencies while still serving daily needs.

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Disaster-Ready
- Xtension cord
Khajuee Nejad Aliakbar
1. Main goal of the project
Disaster risk reduction is not a new matter to focus on, in different design fields such as architecture,
product design, interaction design etc. But living in countries like Iran and Japan, both in danger of
massive earthquakes and other natural disasters and both trying to prepare themselves to reduce the
risk of any type of damage as much as they can afford, even though they are in two very different levels
of accomplishments, I have seen weaknesses in both contexts that I believe their real reasons are down
in the design strategy towards the products and services approaching this issue.
What I had proposed back in 2009 through my master’s degree project at the University of Tehran, as
one way to increase the chance of accessing survival aids among fairly normal citizens of big cities such
as Tokyo or Tehran, right after an earthquake occurrence, was an idea later developed into a design
approach called Disaster Ready design.
The goal of this master degree project is to explore the possibilities of this approach by trying to come
up with good examples of DR products. Not only as a simple idea, sketch or CG rendering but as some
fully developed designs that may be used and tested in later projects.
I have been designing some examples so far and the latest was a design called TWO or This Way Out.
A set of wallpaper boarders with exit way indicators printed on them with glow in the dark ink hidden
inside their normal decorative patterns. Xtension Cord is the next example.
2. What is DR
DR or Disaster-Ready Design is the approach in which a product of daily life is designed and developed
in a way it can also serve effectively in case of a disaster. It is when a product is designed not for
emergency cases only but for everyday life, yet considering what can be the usefulness of it in case of
an emergency like earthquake, tsunami or similar.
There are three properties required to include a product in the DR approached group:
• It is mainly a product of everyday use; a table, a bedside lamp, a sofa.
• The disaster-case role of it is considered by the designers and not improvised by the users. A
simple wooden door used by users as a stretcher is not a DR product.
• The disaster-case role of a DR product can be for right before the disaster (earthquake alert,
smoke detector), just after the disaster (Mask, flashlight, whistle), short-term after the disaster
(rescue tools, blankets, mobile toilets) or long term after the disaster (Identification documents,
temporary housing, renewable energy supplies).
There are several advantages and disadvantages about DR products comparing with DO or Disaster
Oriented ones, which are solely designed considering disaster scenarios. For instance the list below can
be mentioned:

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Advantages:
• DR products are aiming for a larger user range comparing to DO products that are aiming
professional and disaster aware users.
• DR products are primarily designed for daily life, as DO products are usually useless until an
emergency occurs.
• DR products have a higher chance of being around users when a disaster happens as they are
more often used, but DO products are usually kept a side or stored somewhere and may be
forgotten if not used for a long time.
Disadvantages:
• DR products are mainly designed for daily life and may not be as professionally effective in case of
disaster as DO ones.
• DR products may cost more than simply everyday products of their market section that can
decrease their competitive capabilities in the real world.
• DR products may lower the motivation for disaster aware people to buy professional disaster
prevention goods.
But in general this category is somehow under rated in the disaster prevention field and needs more
attention as it is capable of bringing risk prevention chances to more people and in more places.
3. Examples of DR design:
The following examples are some existing projects from around the world that author believs they fit and
feature the properties of what can be called Disaster-Ready design. Although these are just some
examples but such examples are not so many and this field has a lot of more space to work.
• Earthquake proof desk
Earthquake proof desk, by Arthur Brutter and Ido Bruno designed as a school table yet nicely designed
to be used as a shelter in case of an earthquake; this table is a good example of DR design. “…Arthur
Brutter and Ido Bruno built the desk as their final project at the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, and
then presented it as part of the school's Design Bonanza exhibit in Milan, Italy. When designing it, the
two students had to consider not just the durability of the desk, but also how it would be used every day
in the classroom. To keep the weight down so it could be moved easily by students and teachers, they
Fig 1) Earthquake Proof Table

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settled on outfitting each corner of the school desk with collapsible "crush zones" that distribute the
brunt of an impact to the edges, rather than the middle. They also constructed it from inexpensive
materials to keep the final product at an affordable price for schools. Finally the desk was submitted to a
battery of tests by having different materials of different weights dropped on it from a height. The
designers dropped solid blocks of steel and concrete as well as bags of rocks weighing up to 1,000 kg
(about 1 ton) onto their desk. Each time, the top of the desk was destroyed, but the bottom remained
intact, giving students enough space to remain safe from harm. With the desks lined up in rows, this
space could also act as escape tunnels for students to escape or be more easily rescued by emergency
workers. Brutter and Bruno are currently awaiting a patent and official approval from Padua University in
Italy so they can begin distributing their desks to disaster-prone areas around the world.” (1)
• Fire proof head cover seat cushions
These are fairly popular pieces of school ware in Japan serving as chair cushion and fireproof head
covers in case of disaster. There are a wide range of designs and sizes aiming for different ages and
tastes. This is a very good example of how DR products can spread into our daily life in a rather invisible
yet effective way.
Fig 2) head cover seat cushion
Fig 3) Anshin-laito by Yamazaki

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• Anshin-laito by Yamazaki
This is another good example of DR design. It is a regular hand cranked radio-light for emergency which
you may find in different shapes, but this time functioning as a bedside light in everyday life. Although it
could be designed in a less emergency oriented manner still it is a good example in this category of
products.
4. Experimenting New Examples:
DR or disaster ready design approach started as a simple university project to design products for
disasters like earthquake in a city like Tehran at the University of Tehran. It later became a more
systematic research, formed a structured approach and other designs were developed to express its
results. One of the most important ones of these projects was the author’s Master graduation project at
the University of Tehran, Ring on 2010.
The approach showed high potential and attracted a lot of interest and thus, it was later continued in this
course in order to explore the issue deeper and other examples were developed. Here are some
examples developed though this period. These projects have been all developed until working
prototypes and presented in different academic events.
“The Green Angels” is a series of ceramic flowerpots that contains a sealed space for survival items. In
order to access those items you have to break the ceramic vase. The idea is to prevent people from
using up the items before the real disaster as well as giving them a product they can put in different
parts of their living environment. The series included three sizes of simple white ceramic flower vases
with glow in the dark paint on the edge of them and the sealed container of survival items built in their
ceramic structure. It was the first design and the real root of DR idea.
The design was developed until the stage of prototypes and the project was presented at the first
national conference of innovations of the industrial design and natural disasters, “Living with
earthquake”, at the University of Tehran in 2008.
Fig 4) Green Angels, ceramic survival-pack/flowerpots

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This project was searching for small changes design can make that can have big impacts on the lives of
people. Therefor, the approach was towards simple everyday products and how they can help to take
earthquake oriented product make their ways into people’s houses. It was considered an achievable
short-term solution to prepare a city like Tehran for a big earthquake that can happen any moment. Later
it showed the potential of such products not only as a short-term solution but also as a complementary
method to be added to conventional survival packs and such.
Ring is family of survival packs to be put inside any flower vase. It was developed based on the Green
Angels and with the idea of letting people add the pack to their own existing vases. In this product a
plastic capsule working as flashlight and containing other survival necessities like whistle, mask, Band-
Aids, dry food and etc. is buried into flowerpots. These capsules are in two sizes to cover a wide variety
of flowerpots. Ring has a handle shaped like a white ring glowing in the dark. Pulling out the pack with
this handle will easily remove Ring from the soil and automatically turn its light on.
Ring was first presented as the graduation project at the University of Tehran and later was presented
and awarded as one of the winners at the Gensai Design Planning competition in the Disaster reduction
and Human Renovation institution, Kobe, Japan and also at “WAWA project: Social Creative Platform for
Opportunity” event in Tokyo, Japan. It became a good base to form DR approach more accurately and
to research about feasibility of such ideas in real world.
Fig 5) Ring; a survival pack to have in every vase around

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“TWO” or “This Way Out” was the third example designed based on DR design approach. It was the first
project done as a Master course project at Kobe Design University; a series of wallpaper borders with
different decorative patterns hiding the glow in the dark signs showing exit ways. The main idea was to
bring glow in the dark wall stickers into the houses using DR approach. Therefor, some pattern that
were decorative and far from anything related to safety or emergency were designed that could hide exit
way arrow signs printed inside them with special ink in daylight. This way, during the day they were
simply decorative wallpaper borders but at night or in the darkness caused by power outage, they were
showing exit way.
5. Fourth design; Xtension
Xtension is a power strip that has an internal rechargeable battery and a LED unit to serve as a
flashlight. It is basically a power strip you would always need for different places in your house or
workplace that will also serve as a fully charged flashlight and mobile charger in case of need.
Being always plugged in as a regular power strip, they are always fully charged and ready to serve and
also, in the emergency moment there is a higher chance to find them around the room instead of some
where in the unnecessary stuff boxes stocked in the closets.
There are other small details also put into this design. For instance, as one of the important needs in
case of a black out is ambient light, Xtension, provides both spot and ambient light and it has a feature
that makes it able to use any piece of paper like a magazine page or newspaper as a shade for it. It
makes it possible to use it as ambient light without glare problem.
Fig 6) TWO (This Way Out); wallpaper borders with hidden glow in the dark exit arrows

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6. Design Story:
The design is tried to be kept as simple and clean as possible and not too different from what everyone
is comfortable to use as a regular power extension. But it has a tapered shape as a subtle semiotic
feature showing the user the second use of the product as a flashlight as well as its direction.
Fig 7) Xtension cord’s basic functionalities diagram (left) and system descriptive block diagram (right)
Fig 8) First readymade models
Fig 9) First key
sketch (up left),
development
sketches (up right)
and final sketch
(down)

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Although having battery inside a power extension provides the potential to go much further that just
flashlight and charger and have other functionalities also like radio or buzzer, but in this case it is tried to
have a simple charger and flashlight with ambient light capability and prevents from making a gadget
out of what can be seen a simple smart product. But anyway, there is always the capability to design
other versions with different functionalities to make a series of products covering a wider range of
needs.
In order to make a prototype, several simple readymade models were made first to study the
functionality. First it was intended to have one of the AC electricity outlets also working through the
battery to help charging laptops and etc. But as it was not the use-case in most emergency cases and
also it needed heavy and bulky electric parts that would add to size and weight of the final product as
well as making it more expensive and further from a regular everyday power strip, it was decided to
have only one USB through the battery to charge USB chargeable devices like smartphones and etc.
and some regular power outlets working only when connected to electricity.
As for the light, It was first supposed to have a spotlight like a normal flashlight but as further studied
showed, ambient light was a vital need in case of blackout inside buildings, it was decided to have two
light units one working as a spotlight and the other providing ambient light. Some ideas were also
created to help the device make use of any paper around as a shade.
The first prototype featured three electricity outlets, one USB outlet that is also working unplugged and a
5000mAh li-ion battery set with two separate switches for spot flashlight and ambient light. It had also a
special place to clip the shade paper. The cable is also detachable easily so different cable sizes can be
Fig 10) First 3D printed prototype
Fig 11) prototype versions 1,2 and 3 (left to right)

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used as a power extension. It also makes it easier to be detached and used as a flashlight in case of
need.
The first working prototype was made with 3D printing method and using all the electric parts, it was a
successfully functioning model. But as the size was considerably bigger than normal Japanese power
extensions, the design went through a process of minimizing the size. As the result, the battery size was
reduced to 2500mAh, still enough for one full charge of a smart phone. The size was decreased to a
more acceptable range and after making two more 3D printed models, the final prototype was made.
7. Final product
Simply put, Xtension is a product of
daily needs fit for being used around
house or office, not much bigger than
a regular power extension. The price
can be very reasonable and it can
simply be invisible when you do not
need it or just need it to be a simple
power cord.
Yet it is a lifesaver in case of any
power out as it can easily be found by
pulling any wire connected to it and
not only work as a fully charged
flashlight and ambient light, but also
serve as an external battery for your
smartphone as the most important
tool you use in such cases to
communicate, find information and
even lit around. Smartphones have
become a vital part of our lives and it
is not hard to notice how useful can a
fully charged extra battery be for it in
case of an emergency.
Fig 12) CG images of the final design (left) and color study (right)
Fig 13) Everyday (right) and disaster time (left) use scenes of the design

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Battery Capacity 2200 mAh
Dimensions 214.5 x 44 x 34 mm
110v AC outlets 3
USB outlets 1 (from the battery)
Light units 2 (from the battery)
8. Conclusion
This is the fourth design done as an experiment for DR design approach. After Green Angles (a series of
flower pots containing survival kits), Ring (the capsule of survival tools to put inside different flower pots)
and TWO (This Way Out) (the decorative wallpaper boarders, indicating exit ways in the dark) the
Xtension cord is was chosen as another example of DR design approach. Objects of DR design are not
meant to be the only survival tools around, but will increase the chance of rescue and survival by
spreading the risk-reduction goods around your living areas. Obviously, the validity and feasibility of the
products of DR comparing to DO or conventional everyday products is subject of question and more
research and case studies are needed to support their superiority but hey seem to have a high potential
of winning the market and ending up useful and life saving objects in he future.
2014-2015
Ali Khajuee
9. References:
(1). http://www.gizmag.com/earthquake-proof-school-desk/22311/ (2015/1/24)
Fig 1. http://www.dezeen.com/2012/04/11/earthquake-proof-table-by-arthur-brutterand-ido-bruno/ (2014/5/9)
Fig 2. http://www.froebel-tsubame.jp/shopdetail/001005000006/ (2014/5/9) and
http://jisinbousai.net/?pid=11947501(2015/1/24)
Fig 3.http://www.yamazaki-kk.com/technique/detail.php?id=160&t=1&c=3 (2014/5/9)
Fig 4. Design project by the author (2008/2009)
Fig 5. Design project by the author (2009/2010)
Fig 6. Design project by the author (2013/2014)
Fig 7. Descriptive Sketch by the author (2014)
Fig 8. Design process photo by the author (2015)
Fig 9. Design Sketch by the author (2014)
Fig 10. Design process photo by the author (2015)
Fig 11. Design process photo by the author (2015)
Fig 12. CG images by the author (2015)
Fig 13. Use scene photo by the author (2015)
Fig 14. Final prototype specifications by the author (2015)
Fig 14) Final design specifications