The Ecofordable House: An Eco-Friendly Affordable Unit Built with Compressed Earth Bricks, Hybrid Roofs, and Palm Midribs
The Ecofordable House is a six-year long project (2017-2022) at the MSA campus, that experimented with alternative building technologies, and is in line with the UN goals, particularly SDG11.
Headed by Dr. Nermine Abdel Gelil, the project offered a unique practical experience to students that contributes to raising awareness on reducing carbon footprint and diminishing the gap between academic and practical experiences in architectural education.
Saving more than 70% of quantities of cement, steel, and fired bricks - when compared with conventional methods - and also significantly resisting outdoor climatic fluctuations, the alternative materials and technologies contribute to the reduction of CO2 emissions and energy consumption in the building and construction sector. The alternatives combined saved 40-48% in construction costs, and 25-35% of the overall costs of the house.
The project’s participation in COP27 in November 2022 resulted in the signing of a protocol of cooperation between MSA University and the New Valley Governorate (December 2022) to implement a rural house prototype in El Kharga Oasis. Construction activities started in January 2023.
Smart Rain Precipitation Monitoring Station:
The smart Rain Precipitation Monitoring Station is a project funded by MSA University and implemented by a team of MSA graduates headed by Dr Said Mabrouk from faculty of Engineering (Electronics and communication department). The project done within the framework of the Egypt plan 2030 to maximize the rainwater utilization through implementing real time monitoring network for the rain precipitations all over the country that help in taking the right decision for establishing an effective water harvesting network.
The smart rain precipitation monitoring station used for real time data logging of the rainfall quantity, these data are sent from multi nodes in different locations through GPRS using 3G network to remote server to be analyzed, represented, and processed using the implemented software package deployed in the cloud platform.
Along 4 years of research and development, MSA Center of Excellence headed by Prof.Tarek Saleh succeeded to implement many Egyptian made IOT products in the field of Agriculture, Irrigation, Aviation and Environment by collaborating with different Entities as ministries and Research centers.
The participation in COP27 in November 2022 (Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt) was a significant milestone by presenting the Developed Environmental Monitoring Stations to many governmental and private entities all over the world resulted in signing contract with the National Water research Center to install Five rain monitoring stations in different governorates in Egypt as a part of their planned Rain Network stations all over Egypt.
Congratulations to our University and to the Faculty of Engineering students and staff members for this marvelous achievement.