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An unprecedented scale of human migration has lead humanitarians to view camps as long-term settlements rather than temporary holding facilities. The purpose of this paper is to increase the understanding of and identify challenges with this proposed new approach to camp design.

Based on the camp design literature, the authors developed an interview guide and checklist for data collection. A multi-site case study and within- and cross-case analysis was then conducted.

The findings suggest that the proposed new approach is implemented only to a limited extent, and mostly in a stepwise manner. As camps mature, there is a shift toward the new approach, but most camps are established using the traditional top-down, temporary, and isolated approach.

The findings are based on four camps in four different countries and do not provide an exhaustive global coverage.

The insights the authors derived and the challenges identified from the empirical evidence can be used to better plan future camps.

The results can support improvements in camp design, thus alleviating suffering for both refugees and host communities, particularly in developing countries. In particular, the trade-off between a permanent solution and the temporary must be accounted for.

The study contributes to the literature by developing and proposing a conceptual framework to camp design. The cross-case analysis provides an initial understanding and categorization of challenges with implementing the new approach. It also suggests an evolutionary perspective of camp design.

Architectural management and construction practices have not been widely explored in refugee camps which have been growing exponentially around the world. Previous research largely focused on the negativity surrounding living in refugee camps and mostly ignored the input of refugees. This study explores the possibilities of involving refugees in architectural design and construction decisions in the camps.

This research adopts a qualitative interpretive research approach and employs exploratory ethnographic methods. Participatory design (PD) principles are applied to design and construct community place projects in two refugee camps in Greece.

The findings demonstrate that, despite the technical and institutional challenges of employing PD approaches in refugee camps, there are observed positive impacts on the wellbeing of refugees and impacts on the hosting communities.

This paper contests the negativity surrounding refugee camps and has implications on research, practice and society as well as a positive impact on NGO organisations, policy-makers and other stakeholders involved in the governance of refugee camps.

This paper addresses a critical issue concerning how to include refugees in the design, implementation and maintenance of refugee camps to improve their well-being and fight the feeling of “otherness” for both refugees and host communities. This study extends research on refugee camps by collaborating with refugees to improve their lives within the camps. This research contributes to architectural management and construction studies by providing practical recommendations related to PD methods in new contexts.

Motivated by the increasing need to provide support to refugees, which remains as a pressing issue in the agenda of many countries, the purpose of this paper is to consider the refugee camp management problem. Although each of these countries may have different procedures shaped by their own culture, rules and regulations, the main structure of the problem can be modeled utilizing a general framework which will apply to different practices.

In this study, the authors consider the issue with an operations research (OR) perspective and provide such a framework utilizing Turkish Red Crescent (TRC)’s field expertise in many regions of the world. In the proposed framework, the overall refugee camp management problem is first categorized in two main phases: the establishment phase, which consists of one-time decisions like infrastructure design and the administration phase, which focuses on routine decisions that are taken on a periodic basis like aid distribution.

The authors then provide a unifying decision-making model for the establishment phase and detail the administrative phase via subcategories, linking the relevant problems to the OR literature. The proposed framework is general enough to be used by practitioners and to be utilized by the academicians to define new OR problems to the literature.

TRC’s know-how is very broad and extensive. Integrating that know-how with OR perspective, the authors provide a general framework that could be of use to practitioners as well as academicians. The proposed framework will constitute an example for countries of asylum and national or international NGOs to manage the refugee camps efficiently. The authors also highlight main challenges and dynamics of the decision-making problems encountered in different parts of the proposed framework, which may constitute many different problems to the OR literature each of which can open new venues for future research.

The purpose of this paper is to document and analyse the processes underpinning the Southern African Social Innovation Camp (the Camp). This paper details the theoretical basis on which the Camp was designed and assesses the ways in which the participants experienced the camp in light of these theoretical principles.

A qualitative research design was used with four sources of data: participant reviews of the Camp, in-depth interviews with stakeholders, the researcher’s field notes and a reflective blog posted online by one of the participants. Data were analysed using thematic content analysis.

Three themes emerged from the analysis. The Camp as a foreign but safe space that moves people out of their comfort zones, enabling innovative thinking; the importance of discipline and rigour in self-organising groups; and the interplay of diversity feedback and trust/mistrust. The theoretical principles which informed the design of the Camp were clearly evident in these themes.

No evaluation of the degree of innovativeness/quality of the prototypes. While the focus of the study was on participants’ experiences, a clearer indicator of the innovativeness and usefulness of the prototypes would have provided greater insight.

The study describes a theoretical framework for designing innovation groups and establishes the usefulness of the framework for analysing the group processes. Based on the results, recommendations for effective functioning in innovation groups are proposed: group diversification; discipline and rigour in group facilitation; vigilance in eliminating hierarchy; and managing the interplay between diversity, feedback and trust.

Refugee camps can be severely struck by pandemics, like potential COVID-19 outbreaks, due to high population densities and often only base-level medical infrastructure. Fast responding medical systems can help to avoid spikes in infections and death rates as they allow the prompt isolation and treatment of patients. At the same time, the normal demand for emergency medical services has to be dealt with as well. The overall goal of this study is the design of an emergency service system that is appropriate for both types of demand.

A spatial hypercube queuing model (HQM) is developed that uses queuing-theory methods to determine locations for emergency medical vehicles (also called servers). Therefore, a general optimization approach is applied, and subsequently, virus outbreaks at various locations of the study areas are simulated to analyze and evaluate the solution proposed. The derived performance metrics offer insights into the behavior of the proposed emergency service system during pandemic outbreaks. The Za'atari refugee camp in Jordan is used as a case study.

The derived locations of the emergency medical system (EMS) can handle all non-virus-related emergency demands. If additional demand due to virus outbreaks is considered, the system becomes largely congested. The HQM shows that the actual congestion is highly dependent on the overall amount of outbreaks and the corresponding case numbers per outbreak. Multiple outbreaks are much harder to handle even if their cumulative average case number is lower than for one singular outbreak. Additional servers can mitigate the described effects and lead to enhanced resilience in the case of virus outbreaks and better values in all considered performance metrics.

Some parameters that were assumed for simplification purposes as well as the overall model should be verified in future studies with the relevant designers of EMSs in refugee camps. Moreover, from a practitioners perspective, the application of the model requires, at least some, training and knowledge in the overall field of optimization and queuing theory.

The model can be applied to different data sets, e.g. refugee camps or temporary shelters. The optimization model, as well as the subsequent simulation, can be used collectively or independently. It can support decision-makers in the general location decision as well as for the simulation of stress-tests, like virus outbreaks in the camp area.

The study addresses the research gap in an optimization-based design of emergency service systems for refugee camps. The queuing theory-based approach allows the calculation of precise (expected) performance metrics for both the optimization process and the subsequent analysis of the system. Applied to pandemic outbreaks, it allows for the simulation of the behavior of the system during stress-tests and adds a further tool for designing resilient emergency service systems.

Although the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) emphasize the importance of leaving no one behind, the opposite is happening for the world's 89 million forcibly displaced people who are mostly left out of SDGs’ reporting and progress. A key reason for this poor outcome is that host country governments plan refugee camps as short-term shelters, but refugees stay in these camps for more than a decade on average due to ongoing conflicts in their home country. This disparity between intent and reality prevents sustainable living conditions for refugee populations. Operational innovations are needed to find sustainable solutions that ensure a higher quality of life and progress toward sustainability in refugee camps.

Through an abductive case study, the authors develop a theoretical framework on sustainable operational innovations for refugee camps. The authors use this framework to analyze four sustainable operational innovations implemented in three refugee camps in Jordan.

The authors develop three research propositions that describe the conditions required for these operational innovations to succeed: they need to include specific needs and cultural preferences of refugees, they must accommodate host governments' restrictions that limit permanent settlement, and finally, technological innovations require careful data management policies to protect refugees. Doing this, the authors account for the broader political-economic and ecological environments that refugee camps are embedded in.

This paper opens a new area of research on sustainable innovation in humanitarian operations. It provides insights into key contingency factors moderating the link between operational innovations and sustainability outcomes. It represents one of the few studies that build their theorizing upon field data collected in refugee camps.

The paper aims to address the increasing issue of teacher shortages and the lack of diversity in America’s educators. Highly diverse communities need ways to support community members interested in careers as teachers. This article explores one promising approach to reach and inspire high school students considering the teaching profession. Camp ExCEL (Exploring Careers in Education and Leadership) provided a pathway allowing rising high school seniors an opportunity to explore the teaching profession. This pathway utilized the Grow Your Own framework, recruiting students from a diverse community and providing them resources and information that would further efforts to become an educator within their community.

The current study examined outcomes from an education summer camp, using qualitative thematic analysis to reflexively interpret participants’ (n = 29) feelings and beliefs about effective teaching, culturally responsive teaching (CRT), project-based learning (PBL) and their camp experience. Data were collected using Google documents and surveys. The four connected themes that emerged were obstacles and barriers to teaching, qualities of an effective teacher, the impact of culturally responsive teaching and project-based learning on classrooms, and the importance of mentorships within education.

The paper provides insight about how an education camp can support high school students as they explore a career in education. Results suggest that focus on high-quality pedagogy can support student understanding of the career. Students also suggested their perception of effective teaching that includes acknowledging the needs of the whole student, modeling high-quality teaching practices and displaying positive professional dispositions.

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalizability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to conduct and examine education camps further.

The paper includes implications for the development of other education camps, especially in areas with highly diverse populations.

This paper fulfills an identified need to increase the number of persons pursuing a career in education. The focus on a highly diverse community is also an area of need in education. This article details the description of an education camp and the curriculum used, along with findings from data collected during the first year.

It is essential to provide drinking water to affected population directly after a disaster. The purpose of this paper is to develop an optimization methodology that helps in the distribution of drinking water in post-disaster situations.

The research was conducted on two phases: phase 1 aims at identifying an appropriate way to deliver drinking water to refugee camps from external sources, considering required drinking water quantities and four possible sources of water with respect to cost and risk assessments. Phase 2 investigates drinking water distribution within a refugee camp using covering models. The MCLP–optimal number of facilities model is proposed to ensure that the water is distributed and delivered to all individuals in a camp with minimum number of water storage tanks required. A control policy is proposed to ensure the fair distribution of water to all targeted individuals.

Al-Za’atari refugee camp, located in northeast of Jordan, was considered as the case study for this research. The result showed that the appropriate way to deliver water to the camp is by using tanker–trucks, and a minimum number of five tanks are required to distribute water to individuals inside the camp with respect to tank locations and the allocation of tank of each area.

The proposed methodology is essential in decision making for the distribution of drinking water in refugee camps in short-term needs. The model adds important value to the literature as the proposed problem has no solution in the literature before.

This paper aims to explore how making tabletop board games elicited adolescents’ design thinking during their participation in a summer game design camp at their local library.

This study leverages qualitative approaches to coding transcripts of participants’ talk. This study uses the design thinking framework from the Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University as provisional codes to identify and make sense of participants’ verbalized design activity.

This study found that the making context of designing tabletop board games elicited a high frequency of design talk in participants, evidenced by both quantitative and qualitative reports of the data. Additionally, participants in large measure obviated constraints on their design activity imposed by linear conceptions of the design thinking model this study introduces, instead of moving fluidly across design modes. Finally, participants’ prior experiences in both life and in regard to games significantly influenced their design study.

This study highlights the unique affordances of making-centric approaches to designing tabletop games in particular, such as participants’ quick and sustained engagement in the study of design. This study also highlights the need for conceptions of design thinking specific to designing games.

As online academic programs and online student populations continue to grow, it is important to consider the population of graduate-level students and what support they need from the university in order to be engaged and successful. This chapter will provide a review of the theory and research to show that there is a need for academic support for graduate-level students while also discussing how institutions have worked to create meaningful connections for students. Drawing on Astin’s theory of student involvement, this chapter will discuss three ways that the University Academic Success Programs department at Arizona State University has worked to address that need and provide academic support to online graduate students: online graduate writing centers, online dissertation writing camps, and employment of online graduate students. Using interview examples from former student tutors, this chapter will show how these opportunities helped online graduate students feel valued, supported, and connected to the institution. This chapter will conclude by addressing limitations, areas for program growth and future research, and recommendations for practitioners to apply in their own institutions.