MediaLAB Amsterdam is now the Digital Society School! You are viewing an archive of MediaLAB projects. Content on this website may be outdated, and is without guarantee.

Rainproof

Team

Almar Mulder lykermulder@gmail.com
Jeffrey Gyamfi jeffogya@gmail.com
Dymphie Burger dymphieburger@gmail.com

Commissioner: Amsterdam Rainproof

Description

The risk of local floodings due to heavy rains is increasing in the Netherlands. How can we encourage and engage citizens to take action? Together with Amsterdam Rainproof, an Amsterdam based collective for sustainable water management, we will design solutions and gain awareness for this issue.
By dymphieburger May 9th, 2016

Beer update!

 

So, three more weeks have passed, but what is up with the rainproof beer? We have done quite a lot for the beer.

In the first week, we started brewing a new beer, a weizenbier, we were brewing it in the HvA studio, so we got some attention. The minor entrepeneurship noticed us and wrote an article in their startup magazine about us. 

The second batch was yeasting in our locker for two weeks, and is now ready to be bottled!

Team Rainproof brewing in the MediaLAB kitchen

Team Rainproof brewing in the MediaLAB kitchen

Letting the yeast do its job!

Letting the yeast do its job!

 

The day after the brewing, we were invited to join the knowledge mile dinner at The Pool, where we were invited to speak on the stage about our project and the beer. The Knowledge mile is an initiative of several public and private parties to make the wibautstraat and weesperstraat the most innovative and smartest street in Amsterdam. The knowledge mile also wants to be green, therefore they invited us to tell something.

IMG_9055

In the same week, we also got in contact with a local brewery, who were interested in testing brewing with larger quantities of rainwater. We only need a place to catch the rainwater. This place will be the volkshotel, where we will install a simple installation that catches the rainwater that falls on the flat roof.

Alright, so the only thing is, is rainwater safe for consumption? We tested the pH in HvA’s chemistry lab, which was 7, that means that it is ok. Another thing is organic contamination, we got advice from the biology lab, who said that boiling the water for at least 10 minutes will remove all organic contamination. Besides that, we got information from hemel(s)water, who did research on chemical contamination of rainwater, this report stated that it was safe for consumption. However, if we want to commercially sell the beer, there will be more research needed.

 

By dymphieburger April 8th, 2016

DIY: thresholds

Another simple measure you can take to make your house more rainproof is putting a treshold in front of your door. It takes a bit more effort than watering a plant every now and then, but can be a very good emergency measure.

During a heavy rainfall event the water will flow to the lowest part of the street, and that might even be your house! To make sure that the water will not flow into your house, you can make a high threshold.  You can read the story of Marleen Doodkorte here.

© Merlijn Michon

© Merlijn Michon

 

You can even make the threshold stronger with some sand bags.This solution is a last minute solution, you could for instance put the threshold there when you heard on the weather forecast that it might rain heavily. The threshold could be built by a carpenter, but if you are really handy, you could even do it yourself.

By dymphieburger April 8th, 2016

DIY: Rainproofing with Plants

Did you know that plants could play an important role in decreasing the risk of heavy rainfall damage? No?

Ok, so you might already know that the intensity of showers is increasing and can become a serious problem in for example The Netherlands or UK. Local floods damage buildings in many cities, therefore we need innovative prevention measures!

Plants are nature’s helpers, they can reduce geomorphological instability with their roots, they attract precipitation and make river banks more stable (that is one of the reasons why we have uiterwaarden in The Netherlands. Most of the tree and shrub species that are typical for riverbanks and levees absorb a lot of water, they are called hygrophyte species.

A dense vegetation canopy made of autochthonous helps to protect areas against flash floods. It is, as you can say, one of nature’s most efficient flood protection system, but it’s possible to get highly valuable natural area as well.

But, what are hygrophyte species?

  • Poplars (Populus Nigra & Alba)
  • Ash
  • Willows (genus Salix)
  • Elms (Ulmus )
  • Among the shrubs the Elder (Sambucus Nigra)
  • Ferns
  • Sedge and other grasses
populier

A poplar

Read more

By dymphieburger April 8th, 2016

DIY: rain beer!

Who does not like beer, please raise your hand!

Nobody, right, everybody likes beer. In the first sprint, our coach Joris, was brewing his own beer with his Hema brewing kit and had an idea. He had to use a lot of water, and thought that you could also use rainwater in the beer brewing process. This is a way to save drinking water, but also to use rainwater and make your house more rainproof.

There are many people who drink rainwater, whether it is safe to drink will depend on the environment and whether you cleaned it. If you for example have a lot of particulate matter or other types of air pollution in your environment, you will need a more serious approach for cleaning the water. Besides that, rain water does not contains salt and will have similar effects on your health as demineralised water. It is drinkable, but not if it is the only source of water for you, so “geniet, maar drink met mate”  (enjoy, but do not drink too much).

In order to make our beer safe for consumption, we boiled the water, which removed all the organic pollutants. To make it safer, destillation or filtering would be a better idea, because there might still be heavy metals, anorganic pollutants and acids in there. Not so healthy. We will analyse the beer in the lab at the Amsterdam University of Applied science whether the beer is totally safe for consumption.

For those who are interested, Joris uses a Hema beer brewing kit, you can find instructions on brewing beer here.

bier Read more

By dymphieburger March 23rd, 2016

The last part of sprint 2

So, what is the rainproof team doing a sprint later? This morning were the peer pitches, where every team gives a short presentation about the results of their sprint and what they want to do in the next sprint. Our goal was to deliver two concepts with a low fidelity prototype and a small report that explains the two concepts.

In our translate session we discussed our concepts with Amsterdam Rainproof and after that, we explained why we chose to focus on two concepts. The New Lake concept and the Raingers! game concept. We chose these two, because they would be effective to raise awareness and engage people, whilst also being doable.

New Lake

If you already forgot what New Lake was about, the idea is to create a platform that connects citizens (private homeowners) to industry professionals and provides information about rainproofing your house. They can also upload ideas, give feedback and invest in projects. Professionals can join projects. When a project has been executed, the “idea” could be sold on the platform.

photo

photo (1) A user storyboard for New Lake

Read more

By dymphieburger March 16th, 2016

Laser cutting a prototype

Every wednesday, all the MediaLAB interns have workshops, and today we had a laser cutting and adobe illustrator workshop. Every team should make a file in adobe illustrator that could be used by the laser cutter. We decided to make a prototype for our board game and to draw the board. Combined with information from waternet, we gave a ranking to each borough how rainproof it was on average.  The more “rainproof” the borough was, the higher it would be on the board.

The illustration

The illustration

Then we went to the makers lab and got an explanation how the laser cutter worked and decided to cut the boroughs out of cardboard multiple times. After that, we paste them back on each other again, the more “rainproof” boroughs were cut out more than the less “rainproof” boroughs.

Read more

By dymphieburger March 15th, 2016

Rainproof occupying the MediaLAB! – the Office tour

Ok, we are not totally occupying the office, only for four days a week, and only one corner. However, we will try to put our concepts on all our walls to create the “rainproof” corner in the MediaLAB office.  So we will give you a quick tour through the office and our newly developed concepts.

We are, as you might know at the Amstelcampus of the Hogeschool van Amsterdam (Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences). We work in the Studio, a small office where the master Urban Management, the minor Entrepeneurship and the MediaLAB Amsterdam are situtated. We always work in one corner of the office, next to the ESA (European Space Agency) team.

At the back you might see some posters hanging on the walls, those are our newly developed concepts. Read more