Disaster Response
The name for a first, rough version of a solution built quickly to test ideas.
What is a prototype?
The process of moving water from one location to another using a series of connected tubes or channels.
What is water transport?
A structure's ability to bear loads without collapsing.
What is structural stability?
The first type of test your emergency shelter must pass.
What is a wind test?
Choosing a lighter package that saves cost but risks breaking the payload describes this type of decision.
What is a tradeoff?
This FEMA term describes the 6 areas that must be restored after a disaster.
What are critical systems?
The engineering step where a design is tested, evaluated, and improved repeatedly.
What is iteration?
In this activity, teams must deliver a precisely measured amount of clean water.
What is Water Purification Under Constraints?
The path forces travel through a structure from load point to foundation.
What is a load path?
Deciding which feature of a shelter to prioritize when materials are limited is called this.
What is optimization?
This activity simulates delivering fragile medical vaccines by air.
What is the Drop Challenge
Choosing PLA over steel for a shelter frame because it is lighter is an example of this concept.
What is material selection?
Adding a budget system and simulating pipe failures are examples of these in the water activity.
What are constraints?
The term for a shelter that can be built and taken down quickly.
What is a rapidly deployable shelter?
When adding shock absorption increases package weight and raises flight cost, this is the key tradeoff.
What is mass versus protection?
During the Final Challenge, teams must show these three systems can work together.
What are shelter deployment, water delivery, and medical supply?
The branch of engineering focused on designing entire end-to-end processes rather than single components.
What is systems engineering?
This event card forces a team to reroute water delivery due to a blocked path.
What is Road Collapse?
The two properties that determine whether a shelter passes the waterproofing test.
What are material selection and sealing/jointing?
A lower payload mass improves this metric in the Drop scoring system.
What is flight cost (or efficiency)?
The five phases of the engineering design process, in order.
What are Define, Research, Brainstorm, Prototype, and Test/Iterate?
This event card removes all verbal communication, forcing teams to use written coordination only.
What is Communication Blackout?
Name two real-world fields that rely on water purification systems engineering.
What are municipal water treatment and military field operations (accept any valid examples)?
This physics concept explains why a wide base makes a shelter more stable during a wind test.
What is center of mass / stability?
Describe one way the Final Integrated Challenge tests systems thinking rather than isolated skills.
What is requiring all three teams' outputs to function together as a connected system?