About STAR-TIDES

Sharing sustainable solutions.

The TIDES project (Transportable Infrastructures for Development and Emergency Support) is a research effort to encourage information sharing and develop Communities of Interest to support populations in stressed environments. Such environments include Stabilization and Reconstruction (SSTR), Humanitarian Assistance-Disaster Relief (HADR), and Building the Capacity of Partner Nations (BPC). Phase I of TIDES included demonstrations in Oct-Nov 2007 at the National Defense University (NDU) and the Pentagon’s center court. TIDES is one part of a broader effort called STAR (Sustainable Technologies, Accelerated Research).

-TIDES-related environments include: domestic and foreign, short term (disaster relief) and long term (displaced persons), military involvement, or not. Each has different needs.

-DoD usually is not in the lead for these efforts, but often support s others, such as DHS/FEMA domestically, and the State Department/USAID/OFDA overseas.

-TIDES does not try to address all problems in these situations, but focuses primarily on seven infrastructures: Shelter, water, power, integrated cooking, cooling/lighting/heating, sanitation and Information & Communications Technologies (ICT). Medical support will be added in the future.

-The goal is to build the broadest possible communities to suggest innovative solutions to support those who are dealing with real world situations.

-Participation in TIDES does NOT imply endorsement by the US govt.

TIDES’ focus is on information sharing and low-cost, transportable infrastructures, not the capital-intensive infrastructures of the developed world, or the deployable, integrated (and expensive) ones used by the military. TIDES infrastructures should be able to be turned over to the affected populations at the end of an operation.