Exploration of Training and Education for Attaining Disaster Resilience from Sustainability Perspective Among Civil Engineering Students

Abstract

The engineering profession must be developed in an integrated manner by incorporating the training and education aspects of disaster management to ensure that engineering professionals are able to perform during uncertainties besides being able to continuously elevate themselves to handle disaster risks. While disaster management methods or tools are widely available, much still needs to be done to shape them for disaster education purposes from sustainability perspectives. This paper presents results pertaining to the exploration and classification of major sustainability elements in disaster management education based on a disaster management cycle for attaining disaster resilience among civil engineering students at Universiti Sains Malaysia. Specifically, this paper also outlines research outcomes from the applicability of the disaster management cycle with the focus on prioritizing sustainability elements namely economic, environment, social, governance and technology. Results were obtained using a qualitative method through a scenario evaluation to determine the most significant sustainability elements with respect to training and education of disaster management. It is concluded that sustainability elements particularly on governance (at response and recovery stage) and social sustainability (at mitigation and preparedness stage) are found to be influential in disaster training and education for attaining community resilience in the civil engineering field. The study has also revealed that social sustainability plays a significant role throughout all stages of the disaster management cycle. This study provides an avenue for the integration of sustainability elements into disaster management curricular.