this post was submitted on 26 Jan 2024
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Solarpunk technology

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Technology question: are there solarpunk alternatives for firetrucks and emergency services for pedestrianized streets? (slrpnk.net)
submitted 9 months ago by JacobCoffinWrites@slrpnk.net to c/technology@slrpnk.net
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I've really enjoyed reading about people's ideas for solarpunk cities over the last few months, and even making some designs of my own while working on my photobashes.

I really like how pedestrianized streets look, and I enjoy the art of streets that have been reclaimed by forests, bike paths, and gardens, etc.

One thing I keep wondering about, and which has kept me from doing more extreme designs of my own, is firefighting and other emergency services.

Where I am, firefighters and ambulance crews are heavily dependent on their specialized vehicles, and the ability to drive directly to the site of the emergency, whether that's so they can quickly carry someone out on a stretcher and immediately start treatment, or so they can deploy ladder trucks for rescue, or spray down the fire.

A lot of the scenes I've seen, and honestly probably my own most recent one, would probably interfere with modern day firefighters at the very least.

So basically I'm wondering, are there solutions to this I don't know about? Are these tasks already done differently in some other parts of the world? I know people can cary ladders and hoses can probably be hooked to hydrants, but they added the trucks for a reason right? Or are there future solutions for city buildings that aren't very accessible by vehicle? (I'm from a rural area where if your house wasn't accessible enough the plan was basically to just watch it burn down while getting scolded by a firefighter, if they could even find it in the first place).

Or would solarpunk cities just have to require a certain amount of vehicle-capable street access per building, not just for emergency services but so disabled and elderly people can get around, or for transporting heavy items?

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[–] keepthepace@slrpnk.net 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Non tech-heavy solutions:

  1. A path can be driveable for special circumstance while still being mainly pedestrian. I think it is reasonable to ask pedestrian to give way to ambulances and firetrucks.
  2. A path could be required to be destroyable on emergency: e.g. bushes, flowers, light barriers should be destroyable by a good fire truck if they really need to go through. The lever here can be put fairly high, at the end of the spectrum if you look at what military consider "drivable on emergency" it includes pretty solid walls.
  3. I lived for a while in Tokyo where every tall building needs to contain its own evacuation facilities which may include emergency sliders that would generally make evacuation by ladders unnecessary.

Tech-oriented solutions:

  1. Helicopters/drones. Electric vehicles allow some funky possibilities, like them being tethered to a power source (available from any electric vehicle recharge station) and could stay up as long as needed.
  2. Snake firehoses, these cuties can be powered by the water pressure and move guided by light and heat.
  3. Autonomous vehicles half the width of a car, with a mean active suspension, that can fit a laid down wounded and start driving to the hospital without waiting for an ambulance. Military already have those. Smaller than a car, can fit on a bike lane if people give way.

There are excellent reasons to oppose flying vehicles in residential areas and to be critical of a drone-heavy future, but like every tech, used in moderation with an appropriate weighting of the pro and the con, it can lead to remove otherwise inescapable constraints.

[–] JacobCoffinWrites@slrpnk.net 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

Thank you, these are some really good ideas! I hadn't considered 'derivable on emergency' designs, and I actually kinda dig that one in particular - I think it'd be a good fit for fiction, it'd make for a pretty intense scene. Plus you can still do community gardens or bee gardens as long as people remember to keep anything obstructing clear of the zone. Emergencies should outweigh vegetables etc.

I do like the idea of buildings that can handle their own evacuations and even fire suppression in some cases, though I try to focus on retrofits and older buildings being reused in my own projects, so that would have to be cobbled on in some cases. Still, it'd make a lot of sense as a building requirement if everyone is voting to repurpose the streets around it for parks or ponds or something.

I really like the autonomous stretcher vehicles - those are cool. I kinda want to do a scene of an emergency at some point now. You don't see much solarpunk art of the bad days. Using some sort of oversized cargo drone to fly a hose into position, the way they currently position them from ladder trucks, could be interesting. Plus smaller ones for scouting, possibly. The snake firehoses are cool, I'm interested to see what they can do with them as the technology continues.

I agree with weighing tech against its costs and that there's some really cool potential there. Thanks again!

[–] keepthepace@slrpnk.net 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Still, it’d make a lot of sense as a building requirement if everyone is voting to repurpose the streets around it for parks or ponds or something.

Here is a lesson I learned by discussing with an almost self-managed village in France: when you include all stakeholders in a decision, it can take long to decide things but:

  1. There is more intelligence to take into account all the details
  2. Once a consensus is found, execution is usually unopposed and much faster

The scenario you describe is a clear case for showing a true deliberative decision process. "We can make a pretty park here, but Jacob's house is not fire-resistant rated, so either we keep an emergency road along, or we chip in to put the house up to the regulations". Ensues discussion about Jacob being a bit selfish in holding back this project and should chip in for raising the house value, about emergency services being a right, about the park being a project for everyone's benefit, etc.

[–] JacobCoffinWrites@slrpnk.net 2 points 9 months ago

That kind of hits the center on why I'm asking about this stuff - I feel like a lot of the proposed solutions and visions of the future I see around often feel like they came from one person's mind and they either didn't know about the ways they would impact people, or they didn't care. I know how little I know about city planning and just the various ways other people interact with the world around them, so I figure if I spot something that seems unrealistic or like it'd cause problems, there's probably even more that someone with different experiences or skillsets would find. Luckily it's all fictional at the moment, but I don't want solarpunk as a genre or my projects in particular to feel like something that would be forced on someone.

It's also a big part of why I ask these questions. I think any future worth having would be consensus-driven, so art of it should be too. I don't currently have any plans to do scenes of fire disasters, but I'll do others of city streets, and I want to take this stuff into account.

I also like the point you made about execution, when a project gets to that point, being much faster. I feel like big projects tend to get rammed through the approvals process around here, and any discussion section seems sort of cursory, like the developers and engineers and city/town officials have already decided what they're going to do and as long as its legal, they're just gonna go right ahead. Having the slow process of getting buy-in all around happen in the planning phase hopefully would be cheaper than getting sued every time you start breaking ground somewhere. It requires a more actively-involved community so people don't get surprised finding out that something's already been approved, but that would be an improvement all around too.

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 5 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Small flexble tricycle ambulances are actually quite common in low income countries with narrow old roads. For a relatively modern version see: https://www.dayangmoto.com/special-tricycle/ambulance-tricycle/

Firefighters are also often a broad volunteer movement, meaning if every house has at least one trained person with easy to carry fire suppressing equipment, the fires will rarely get big enough to require professional outside help, at least in dense residential areas.

[–] JacobCoffinWrites@slrpnk.net 2 points 9 months ago

Very cool! You could definitely take one of those down a bike path. We had volunteers where I was, but I hadn't thought about the benefits of the density of cities - you could have a way bigger volunteer brigade, and they would be much closer to hand

[–] CounselingTechie@slrpnk.net 2 points 9 months ago

I admittedly have been interested in the cargo bicycle/tricycle concept for an ambulance in the past, mostly from wondering what is the balance that they found works to mitigate risk of jostling patients in transit while maintaining a fast enough speed, especially when taking into account different road conditions, as could be common place in a rural community.