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Cambodian Social Innovation Projects AY2015-2016

Final Presentations by the 3 Cambodian Social Projects on 4th November.

 

Students (From the left standing)

1) Kiki Indriani

2) Chandini Manoharan

3) Jensen Goh Qian Sheng

4) Liu Renhao

5) Sim Zhi Min

6) Ruzanna Alwi

7) Abonti Alam

8) David Chen

9) Kimberley Cham (not in photo)

10) Elizabeth Lee (not in photo)

 

Examiner and supervisors (From the left seated)

1) Thierry Do

2) Ng Hui Hsien

3) Kevin Kuang

 

Cambodian Social Innovation Project 1

 

Water for Life- A Social Innovation project in Cambodia

Chandini Manoharan & Kiki Indriani

Supervisor: Dr. Kevin SC Kuang

 

Social Innovation in Cambodia is a project that aims to improve the quality of Cambodians lives, especially those living in slums and rural areas. During our field trip to Phnom Penh, Cambodia, we visited a few slums and Smile Village, a residential area for relocated slum dwellers. Our group chose the community residing at Smile Village as our main focus of our study. Smile Village is currently undergoing many changes because the residential area is still under development. One of the most prominent issues that they face pertains to water.


Water availability and quality are unstable because the NGOs in charge of Smile Village are still trying and choosing a few water systems before deciding on the system that suits them best. One of the main water sources that the villagers use is rainwater. The quantity of the rainwater is quite abundant; however, because of the way they stored rainwater and the fact that their storage tanks are not cleaned properly, quality of the collected rainwater is inferior to that of fresh rainwater.
To solve this issue, we aim to introduce a product called Jerry Tank. It is a stackable Jerry Can that can be opened up into two halves and be used as washing basins, and stacked with other Jerry Tanks to form a continuous water tank. Its design is based on the types of water storage that the villagers at Smile Village are currently using to introduce familiarity. The mechanism is purely mechanical and thus, easy to implement. With a design that enables easy cleaning and longer storage of fresh rainwater, it aims to solve the issue of water contamination.

 

 

 

 

Cambodian Social Innovation Project 2

Merit Award in the FoE 30th Innovation & Research Award (2016).

 

Tackling Open Defecation in rural Cambodia

Ruzanna Alwi, Abonti Alam & David Chen

Supervisor: Dr. Kevin SC Kuang

 

Open defecation is defined as defecation in outdoor open spaces. It causes a myriad of diseases such as cholera, polio and diarrhoea, killing 2.5 children every minute and incurs huge cost on human capital. Thus, this issue has been identified by United Nations as a millennium development goal and in 2013, an open call to end open defecation by 2025 has been issued. Yet even now, 60% of the rural Cambodian population still practices open defaecation.


This report explores the adverse effects of open defecation in Cambodia, and how it affects people’s health, safety and dignity. Through a design-ethnographic method of fieldwork and subsequent research to verify our findings, we crystallized the needs of the locals into design challenges for our project. Viable solutions were brainstormed and proposed over a duration of 12 months using a design-thinking framework. The report details this journey, and proposes a three-prong approach of providing a toilet unit and a composting facility, undergirded by a social implementation model to tackle this problem in Rural Cambodia. The report ends off with an action plan for change makers to use our proposed solutions, in the hopes of eventually ending open defecation in Cambodia, starting off with the implementation of a pilot project.

 

 

Cambodian Social Innovation Project 3

 

Waste Management Solution in Phnom Penh

Jensen Goh, Liu Renhao & Sim Zhi Min

Supervisor: Dr. Kevin SC Kuang

 

Waste management efforts in Cambodia have been largely ineffective, with the multiple steps
in the waste management process facing various challenges. This has resulted in buildups of
municipal solid waste in urban environments, resulting in the phenomenon of urban mining,
where slum dwelling urban poor partake in scavenging activities to collect recyclables to
bolster their own income. There have been various efforts by NonGovernmental
Organisations (NGOs) to involve these urban poor in the operation of composting and other
waste related processing efforts. However these have not been very successful as they are
unable to engage the urban poor effectively due to a lack of understanding of their
preferences and lack of education.


This report details the development and proposed implementation of ‘Blue Pill Digester’, an
anaerobic digester designed with the Cambodian context in mind. The design process
involved is shown, detailing the function analysis, prototyping process, design features,
various iterations of the prototype, as well as the validation of the product through
experiments conducted in the Energy and Environmental Sustainability Solutions for
Megacities (E2S2) laboratory at CREATE in University Town.


With food and organic waste constituting 63.3% of the total municipal solid waste in Phnom
Penh, this product aims to reduce the amount of foodbased waste while creating small
business opportunities for the urban poor within the city of Phnom Penh through sale and
usage of the biogas produced. The product differs itself from current existing anaerobic
digesters in that it is a scaled down design that is mobile and robust, allowing for the intuitive
operation and maintenance by a single operator as well as the storage and application within
the city of Phnom Penh where space is a premium and transport is a challenge.
Incorporating findings from the experiments conducted in the E2S2 laboratory at CREATE,
the design further differentiates itself by including the use of intermittent mechanical
agitation and the addition of activated carbon to improve greatly on the waste loading to gas
produced ratio. This compensates for the reduced volume and allowing the product to achieve
a its targeted gas output of 200L as validated through the testing of the prototype.

 

 

 

 

Wireless Sensors and Actuators for Home Automation

3rd Prize in nation-wide Smart Cool Ideas for Better HDB Living (2015/2016).

 

 

Smart Laundry System

Jiang Rong Rong, Foo Feng Lin, Wong Yew Keong & Toh Wei Kee

Supervisor: Dr. Kevin SC Kuang

 

In Singapore, there are some problems faced when residents do their laundries using bamboo poles. While there are many existing solutions out there in the market that could help to tackle some of the problems faced, they still failed to solve some problems faced by users. Hence, this paper will discuss more of how such problems can be tackled by coming up with a concept of smart laundry system.

 

Based on the survey done online, most Singaporeans would prefer to dry their clothes outdoor. However, there are some problems faced like spraining of the back to carry heavy bamboos poles out of the window and could not keep the clothes in time due to sudden downpour. However, there are some products already available in the market that could replace using bamboo poles. These products are racks that could be manually pushed out by users to dry their clothes. However, these products may not be applicable to certain users like elderly as they would have the physical strength to push the loaded racks out. Besides that, this still does not rectify the issue of users not able to keep their clothes in time due to sudden downpour. Hence, we have decided to venture into the concept of using automation in our smart laundry system.

 

The smart laundry system would allow both manual and automated control. Users will be able to extend and retract racks by pushing a button on the control panel or using a webpage. Hence, no physical strength is required. Furthermore, there will be sensors to detect weather changes. Thus, if it rains, the rack will be retracted automatically. Therefore, users do not have to worry about not being able to keep their clothes in time when there is a sudden downpour.

 

In conclusion, Singaporeans do their laundries frequently by drying their clothes using bamboo poles. However, such methods caused problems like spraining of backs or not keeping clothes in time when there is a sudden downpour. There are existing solutions out there in the market to ease the process of doing laundries. However, some problems are still not being rectified. Hence, with a smart laundry system, users would not have to worry about those problems.

 

 

 

 

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