Dear Colleagues,
We've developed a lightweight web tool for calculating the net storage capacity of an existing cold room from its installed shelving, and we'd value critique from this community before we take it further.
The gap we're trying to fill
The established tools — the WHO Vaccine Volume Calculator, the Immunization Supply Chain Sizing Tool, the UNICEF Cold Chain Weight & Volume Calculator, and the EVM Assistant — all run from demand to required capacity. In practice, the harder half of a capacity gap analysis is often the supply side: establishing what a given room already holds, room by room, with the shelving physically present in it. That work is still typically done in spreadsheets, transcribed from field notes.
What the tool does
- Room-level inputs: facility, room description, length, width, height (cm)
- Per shelf unit: shelf width, shelf length, number of shelves, shelf thickness, floor-to-bottom clearance, floor-to-top-shelf height
- Outputs: gross room volume, net storage capacity (litres and m³), and the ratio between them
- Multiple rooms per assessment, with a to-scale isometric diagram that redraws live
Method
The shelving calculation follows WHO TRS 961, Annex 9, Supplement 3, Estimating the capacity of storage facilities, §2.5.5, applying both the restricted and unrestricted ceiling-height forms and taking the more conservative result. The utilization factor defaults to 0.5 and is user-adjustable within the 0.5 to 0.65 range the supplement specifies. It is displayed on screen and carried into the output, so any result can be reproduced and audited.
Where we'd like input
- Does taking
min(restricted, unrestricted)match how you'd apply §2.5.5 in practice, or should the user select the case explicitly? - Is 0.5 the right default for walk-in cold rooms specifically, or does field experience suggest otherwise?
- What validation would you want before trusting an output for a procurement or gap analysis decision?
- What is missing for the tool to be useful in an EVM assessment or a CCE inventory exercise?
🔗 https://crspace-calc.iseet.co
The tool is under active development. Comments here or to ([email protected]) are welcome, particularly where the method is wrong.
Thank you and best regards,
Amjad