The Role of Industrial Design for the Sustainable Disaster Management in Türkiye

This article aims to discuss the contributions of the industrial design discipline to the development of new product and service systems for sustainable and effective disaster management in Turkey. For this reason, the article focuses on innovative process activities such as design and R&D carried out by the Turkish NGO-affiliated Shelter Systems Company, a major player in disaster response and one of the largest shelter system manufacturers in Europe. This research explores the roles of the industrial design discipline in innovation processes, as well as the organizational characteristics of the innovation activities carried out in the Shelter Systems Company. Within the scope of the case study, a business process analysis was conducted to understand the role of design in the creative process activities of the Shelter Systems Company and the natural workflow of the design processes. The research demonstrated that the Shelter Systems Company has recently shifted to income-generating activities that support social entrepreneurship, aiming to transform these efforts into social benefits. However, the main process activities of the Shelter Systems Company are primarily manufacturing orientated. Its industrial design capacity is limited, its inovation process is closed to external influences, and its horizontal collaborations for open information sharing with external organisations and stakeholders are restricted. Based on the findings, this research proposes strategies to make industrial design more effective in the innovative process activities of the Shelter Systems Company in disaster management.