BreezeBlog

We're delighted to have been involved in last week's TIDES event at Washington's National Defense University.

TIDES - the acronym for Transportable Infrastructures for Development and Emergency Support

Dr Linn Wells II gives an overview and vision of the project in his TIDES Blogspot.

In essence TIDES is about raising the game in how we deal with disaster relief and humanitarian crises. Too often it seems throwing money at the problem is thought to be the answer. TIDES is about bringing knowledge together in a systematic way. It's believed that clear thinking will lead to more practical solutions which succeed in the field.

This report from CBS News’ Chief Foreign Correspondent, Lara Logan CBS News report show what happens when aid is given without thinking through how it will work long-term in practice.

Removing basic infrastructure, such as sanitation, makes the spread of disease much more likely. In refugee populations, like any other, some people are more vulnerable than others – the elderly and the newborn, for example. Fighting off disease is a lot harder when also trying to cope with the heat. We envisage that a simple, practical cooling system that could be used to support these vulnerable groups.

So, why is SleepBreeze involved? Put simply, we volunteered.

In terms of our product it fits easily into the TIDES mindset.

First of all it runs “off the grid”. Linn Wells discusses the use of rechargeable AA batteries in his Blogspot.

The cooler is also low cost, with a target price of around $80.

Some time ago we asked military experts who have been involved in humanitarian crises to take a look at an early prototype of our product. Their advice was to reduce the “cube” - the packed size of the product and its weight. The “cube” is an important consideration when thinking about the logistics of shipping equipment into the field. This made us take a radical look at the design, and we stripped out about half the weight and volume.

The spin off from that design change has benefits for our individual customers buying over the internet. When we ship to them the postage is a lot less! And from a sustainable business point of view, we're now using a tiny fraction of the plastic that we were.

So, what’s next? Well the TIDES project planned a move to the US Marine Corps facility at Henderson Hall, Arlington this week.

And for us, we’re continuing the minutiae of getting the first production run underway and supporting the TIDES project in anyway we can.

Andy