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Boosting this quality contribution up in the Hot Listing - declared quality by kulpims.

Interesting idea, but in the context of a humanitarian crisis I don't think it's that useful. The sheer cost of shipping that kind of weight to a crisis zone is certainly an inhibiting factor. Add on top of that the necessary infrastructure and available resources needed to transport it once in the crisis zone and it is getting orders of magnitude more difficult. Finally, the thought of giving up 800 to 1,000 liters of water that surely is needed for consumption just to construct one building that could house two families seems ludicrous.

Certain places would be prohibitive-What about in Haiti after the quake? They used these and used sea water most likely.
Once they are up they can be used for a long time as permanent structures for housing.

*related=http://videosift.com/video/Buildings-in-a-bag-Inflateable-concrete-shelters

Buildings in a bag. Inflateable concrete shelters. has been added as a related post - related requested by Mobius.

New toy for the people that visits music festivals

Fair enough. Every crisis is different. My mind went straight to central sub-Saharan Africa and refugee situations. Just important to use the right tool at the right time in the right place when it comes to these things.

Um, but this is not a temporary structure. So what if it takes only a day to "build" if you end up not wanting it there in a month... Disaster areas do not stay as such.

I love the idea though. I wonder if you can DIY with the right canvas and concrete. If they're selling it ready to go for under $5k, I can see it being very useful. Even better if you can build it yourself for under $0.5k.

Then don't ship the tents; ship the components for a tent factory.
..still, I wonder if it is more efficient than delivering surplus or decommissioned cargo vans?
..and yeah, probably not a good idea to use potable water for this, but waste water is far more abundant.

It's going to be factored into the cost of aid budgets. If it's cheaper than the existing solutions and/or they see new benefits then it's a goer.

This could well fall foul of rules for buildings used by the UN in disaster areas. Any building or shelter they use must be below the standard of the usual dwelling used by people in the area. So, if people are usually living in tiny tents something like this may well not be used because it's an improvement on what they were using before.

Remarkably this is something that really happens. It's to stop absolutely everyone in the country turning up asking for aid. If what you're putting up is better than everyone else has then everyone else will want it. You want what you erect to be good enough to do what you want, but for people in the area to only go if they really need to.

A friend of mine worked with a company that fell foul of this. They developed a small easily portable shelter which was cheaper and better than the tents being used now. They thought it would be a no brainer, but it was rejected by the UN specifically because it offered too good a standard of living for those using it.

So why can't you just set up your concrete tent, and then wait for rain?