bluelab india project

BLUElab Thailand is a socially engaged design organization that unites students from multiple disciplines at the University of Michigan and Chiang Mai University in pursuit of creating sustainable solutions to flood mitigation in our partner district of Mae Chan, Northern Thailand. We believe flood mitigation is where we have the greatest potential for positive impact and where we will be the least disruptive to local culture and ways of life. Socially engaged design recognizes that people are the experts of their own lives. Everything we know about Mae Chan is derived from the knowledge and experience of the people that know it best. During our founding, we interviewed government workers, marketplace vendors, small business owners, firefighters, and others who all spoke their experience coping with floods. Our principal project partner in Mae Chan is the municipal head of the disaster mitigation and prevention team. It is for him and his team that we design tools to maintain drainage infrastructure and control flow through the municipality. We are currently in the process of prototyping and testing these tools.