Developing an innovative disaster resilience framework with universities as key agents – the value of consolidating international expertise

Abstract

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, the higher education sector has seen an expansion of universities’ expertise from being providers of education, research and knowledge transfer to providers of crisis response capacity for partners and stakeholders. Prior to that, nascent approaches towards delivering disaster mitigation and response capability through community training and volunteering were seen across universities located in areas prone to natural disasters. This leads to the purpose of the paper, which is to address initiatives required to enhance the role of the higher education sector in disaster resilience. Specifically, in relation to driving national policy-making and disaster management activities at the local level, high levels of decentralization prevent effective interventions by central government bodies. Based on an inductive approach, the methods used were informed by an initial fact-finding exercise and a series of roundtable discussions involving senior higher education and disaster resilience experts from across Indonesia and Europe. Building on the four theoretical perspectives, expert opinions then informed the conceptual development of an innovative and scalable disaster resilience framework. Within the higher education sector, this integrates conventional streams of university activity, such as curriculum development, research, innovation, knowledge transfer and networking, with a contextually adapted and appropriate disaster mitigation and response capability.