This project endeavors to foster cooperative efforts in developing Solar-Powered Emergency Shelter Solutions (SPESS) to strengthen the wider APEC community’s energy-resilience & sustainability affected by natural disasters, thereby contributing to APEC 2015’s priority area of “Building Sustainable and Resilient Communities”

Catastrophes in our region — such as

·  2005 Hurricane Katrina,

·  2008 Earthquake in China's Sichuan province,

·  2010–11 Queensland Australia floods & 2011 Thailand floods,

·  2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and the ensuing tsunami,

·  2012 Superstorm Sandy in US,

·  2013 Super Typhoon “Haiyan” hitting eastern Philippines,

— are important reminders of the severe situation APEC community faces.

Accounting for 70 percent of all natural disasters, the Asia Pacific is highly prone to climate change impact. One of APEC 2015’s priority areas was “Building Sustainable and Resilient Communities”, and this project aims to foster cooperative efforts to strengthen APEC community’s energy-resilience and sustainability affected by natural disasters.

Conventional grid-based energy supply often experiences severe disruptions after disasters hit. Developing Solar-Powered Emergency Shelter Solutions (SPESS) contributes to building an energy-resilient APEC community through secure and sustainable energy supply along with emergency sheltering for disaster victims in dire needs during disaster relief period.

This project will establish two workshops to engage key APEC stakeholders/experts and an SPESS open/crowdsource innovation competition to tap into APEC community’s knowledge base for a more diverse perspective, culminating in the development of “Recommendations on Deploying SPESS for Energy-Resilience in Disaster-Stricken APEC Community”. The Recommendations will represent a humble step towards building sustainable and resilient APEC communities.

For details of SPESS project, please kindly refer to APEC links below.

SPESS Project as in APEC Project Database:

https://aimp2.apec.org/sites/PDB/Lists/Proposals/DispForm.aspx?ID=1754

SPESS Project as in APEC Meeting Document Database (MDDB) with Budgeting & Latest Work Plan:

http://mddb.apec.org/Documents/2015/EWG/ERTF/15_ewg50_ertf_003.pdf