Humanitarian Engineering

This paper presents a successful ongoing partnership between Clemson Engineers for Developing Countries (CEDC) and a concrete masonry unit (CMU) manufacturing plant in rural Haiti. The infrastructure destruction and resulting loss of life of the 2010 earthquake in Haiti highlighted the need for improved building materials and codes. This partnership has helped to improve the strength of CMUs in the plant, both creating a safer local built environment and expanding the economic opportunities for this plant. Using samples of aggregate and cement from the site in Haiti, students in Clemson performed experiments to optimise the CMU mix design and made other suggestions to improve efficiency and quality of their product. Consistency continues to be a challenge for the CMU plant, and this paper also describes proposed procedures to help the plant implement quality control and quality assurance plans.

Humanitarian engineering across the UK has been a steadily growing area of pedagogical practice to enhance the knowledge of engineering students by applying their skills in global scenarios. These scenarios are different from the average activity due to their focus on not only the solution to the problem, but also the people, culture, religion and other factors that can make a huge impact upon the longevity and sustainability of the installed solution. This paper looks to gain understanding of the underlying definition of what being entrepreneurial actually is, whilst reviewing the multiple debates surrounding entrepreneurship and humanitarian engineering. Once an understanding of the background literature is complete, measurement of the characteristics of these humanitarian engineering students were conducted and compared against other engineers and students studying enterprise and entrepreneurship. In order to improve accuracy a pilot study was built into the measurement tool in order to improve validity. A secondary facet of this work looks to understand the experiences of engineers who have been involved in field work in Africa and have actively observed and contributed towards the impact of the engineering projects on systemic entrepreneurship. By further developing the use of humanitarian engineering across higher education institutions, systemic entrepreneurship can be improved both in the UK and in the international projects that they are involved in. One of the key outcomes being the need to educate engineers in systemic entrepreneurship and the fact that it does not just apply within business, rather it is a mindset that can influence both their career and the individuals whom they come into contact with throughout their lives.

This book introduces the capability approach – in which well-being, agency and justice are the core values - as a powerful normative lens to examine technology and its role in development. This approach attaches central moral importance to human capabilities understood as effective opportunities people have to lead the kind of lives they have reason to value. The book examines both the strengths and limitations of the capability approach when applied to technology, and shows the need to supplement it with other approaches in order to deal with the challenges that technology raises.

The first chapter places the capability approach within the context of broader debates about technology and human development. The middle part then critically scrutinizes the relation between technology and human capabilities, arguing that attention needs to be paid to both design details and to embedding technology in broader socio-technical networks. It also discusses the relationship between technology and the good life, including the danger of imposing one vision of what it means to lead a good life through the transfer of technologies. The final chapter examines the case of 'ICT for Development' (ICT4D), as the technology domain where the approach has been most extensively applied so far.

This is an invaluable read for students in Development Studies and STS as well as policy makers and practitioners looking for an accessible overview of technology and development from the perspective of the capability approach.

This project analyzed and redesigned the various components of a previously designed sisal decorticator prototype. The sisal plant is easily grown in the arid regions of Kenya and its fiber has widespread industrial and consumer applications. Competition from Brazilian and Chinese sisal growers has made it difficult for small-scale Kenyan sisal farmers to yield a profit. Decorticator machines strip the usable fiber from the sisal leaves. A strong market exists in Kenya and beyond for an affordable and capable decortication device. Based on interaction with University of Nairobi students and faculty, design parameters were assessed and adapted to create a working prototype to meet these needs. Throughout the design process, affordability, energy consumption, transportability, reliability, on-site material and assembly constraints were taken into account. The designs chosen accomplished the project requirements by minimizing cost through material selection and ease of manufacture, and provided adjustable parameters in order to facilitate decortication quality testing. A vertical feed, small diameter decorticator with steel blades transportable via a steel frame with two wheels was determined to be the optimal solution. Testing with actual sisal and variable components enabled quality to be assessed as well as ensured that the designed prototype operated correctly and safely.

Households’ participation has been unanimously advocated by various frameworks and guidelines but has also been rarely post-evaluated to prove its importance in the post-disaster reconstruction programs. This study examined the case of Pope Francis Village in Tacloban City, Philippines – a post-Yolanda resettlement advocated with extensive participatory interventions. Households’ depth of participation was analyzed including its influence to the level of residential satisfaction being an indicator of a project’s success or failure. Data were derived through surveys, key informant interviews, and FGD. Across forty-three (43) indicators from the planning, design, and construction phases, depth of households’ participation was rated average (mean = 2.90 / 5.00) while the level of households’ residential satisfaction was rated high (mean = 3.86 / 5.00) from thirty-five (35) attributes across the dimensions of site characteristics, housing condition, institutional services, and social environment. Using Pearson’s correlation, it was determined that the households’ depth of participation and the level of their residential satisfaction have a significant, strong, and positive linear relationship, r (160) = .36, p = .000. Further, using multiple linear regression, it was identified that participation during the construction phase influenced the level of residential satisfaction with housing condition (R2 = .113) and social environment (R2 = .133). Also, participation during the design phase influenced the level of residential satisfaction with institutional services (R2 = .073). However, when dealing with the notion of participation, this study suggests reframing it to “compromise and collaboration” rather than as beneficiary control (Arnstein, 1969; Choguill, 1996) or mere collaborative pursuit (Opdyke et al., 2019) due to the realities of participation encountered.

The objective of engineering education is to educate students who are ‘ready to engineer’.  This implies that students should be broadly prepared with not only deep knowledge and understanding of the technical fundamentals, but also the pre-professional skills required to be successful in the engineering workplace of today and tomorrow1.  Part I of this paper includes a brief rationale and need for ‘Engaged Scholarship’ and the inherent need for a robust ecosystem to support it.  Part II details the existing curricular, co-curricular, and extra-curricular efforts which form the core for the engaged scholarship ecosystem in the College of Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University.  Curricular, co-curricular and extra-curricular opportunities for students are detailed.   Part III provides an overview of how this assortment of minors, certificates, programs, courses, and student organizations is being integrated and institutionalized into a strategic mission for the University.

‘Humanitarian Engineering’ (engineering to support society) is an initiative that has seen considerable growth in recent years within Australasia and North America and more recently within the UK. It is however still in a nascent phase, and is without a clear global definition.
Entrepreneurship on the other hand is well established, understood and has been researched globally for several decades, although still presents conflicting views of what it means to be entrepreneurial.
Entrepreneurship does not, on the surface, appear to share obvious connections with humanitarian engineering, however, when considering the researched characteristics of entrepreneurial individuals such as creativity, perseverance and risk taking and characteristics shown by humanitarian engineers, similarities can be seen. The purpose of this research is to develop a clear definition for the term ‘Humanitarian Engineering’ and to investigate rigorously the relationship between entrepreneurial characteristics and the characteristics of those studying humanitarian engineering; both qualitative and quantitative data will be used.
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Qualitative data are gathered from individuals engaged in humanitarian engineering and provides insight into the definition of humanitarian engineering in a UK context.
The primary quantitative research method is an updated version of Gasse and Tremblay’s (2006) Entrepreneurial Characteristic Inventory that measures the 11 recognised entrepreneurial characteristics. This allowed the author to compare and contrast these characteristics as demonstrated by students studying general engineering, humanitarian engineering and enterprise.
The quantitative results show that seven of the 11 entrepreneurial characteristics measured are significantly higher in humanitarian engineering students compared with the general engineering students. Nine of the eleven characteristics measured are significantly higher in enterprise students compared with the humanitarian engineering students.
Entrepreneurial characteristics are important within engineering, due to the economic impact and association with competencies listed within UK-SPEC to meet Chartered Engineer status but engineers are often the least engaged with entrepreneurial support packages in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs).
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This research shows that engagement in humanitarian engineering activities by graduates can act as an indicator for employers of engineers, during the recruitment process, to the existence of these desired entrepreneurial competencies.
Further impact of this research is the potential targeting of students within HEIs for enterprise support mechanisms to increase venture start-ups and enhance the relationship between engineering faculties and the enterprise agenda.

This paper proposes an integrated solution using a mobile computing device suitable for use by illiterate people in mainly rural areas. Modifications in supported applications including telephony, messaging and browser to enable them to be used text free are described. Images, animations and speech recognition are used instead of text, as well as WebRTC for real time communication. Infrastructure needed to support the use of such devices in rural areas is also considered, as well as a revenue sharing model to enable such infrastructure. We show it is possible to manufacture a phone customized to such users within a reasonable price and using existing technology. Our approach is to use technology to empower illiterate people at a level which they can presently relate to, rather than focus on technology to promote literacy.

This article offers a critical ethnographic analysis of the organization Mines Without Borders (MWB), a student group at Colorado School of Mines. It evaluates the impact the group’s institutional culture has on its effectiveness as a student-led engineering-to-help organization. Through ethnographic and participatory research methods, we sought to understand members’ motivations for joining the organization, their prior knowledge of engineering-to-help, their assessment of the organization, and how well MWB balances service learning for their members and impact on the communities they seek to serve. A participatory photo essay was used to illustrate the perspective of the community members in Nicaragua, and vice versa. The researchers found that members are primarily motivated by a desire to help disadvantaged populations, have little background knowledge on principles of engineering-to-help, see the organization as socially exclusive, and that MWB places a greater emphasis on student experience than community impact. The participative photo essay suggests that MWB members and community members have different perceptions of what constitutes collaboration. This evaluation advances current research on engineering-to-help organizations with the growth of humanitarian engineering programs throughout the world. The results of this study have been used within the organization to enhance its potential effectiveness to benefit students and community members alike.

This project analyzed and redesigned the various components of a previously designed sisal decorticator prototype. The sisal plant is easily grown in the arid regions of Kenya and its fiber has widespread industrial and consumer applications. Competition from Brazilian and Chinese sisal growers has made it difficult for small-scale Kenyan sisal farmers to yield a profit. Decorticator machines strip the usable fiber from the sisal leaves. A strong market exists in Kenya and beyond for an affordable and capable decortication device. Based on interaction with University of Nairobi students and faculty, design parameters were assessed and adapted to create a working prototype to meet these needs. Throughout the design process, affordability, energy consumption, transportability, reliability, on-site material and assembly constraints were taken into account. The designs chosen accomplished the project requirements by minimizing cost through material selection and ease of manufacture, and...

This study explored the aspirations of undergraduate engineering students in regard to helping others, examining potential differences between disciplines and institutions. Over 1,900 undergraduate students from 17 U.S. universities responded to a survey in spring 2014. In open-ended responses, 15.5 % of the students included some form of helping people and/ or the world as one of the factors that motivated them to select their engineering major; for 6.7 % of the students this was the primary or only motivating factor listed. Helping as a motivation was not equally prevalent among different engineering disciplines, being much more common among students majoring in biomedical, environmental, materials, and civil and less common in computer and aerospace. Different disciplines also varied in the priority for helping people relative to other future job factors – highest in chemical/biological, moderate in civil and related majors, and lowest among electrical/computer and mechanical. Institutional differences were found in the extent to which students indicated an importance that their career would help people and the extent to which an ability to help others was a central message in their major. The results indicate the percentages of engineering students who are most likely to embrace humanitarian engineering; fostering these aspirations in students could help with attraction and retention.

Geçtiğimiz yıl boyunca, Batı Çin’in Sincan Uygur Özerk Bölgesi’nden raporlar gelmeye başlamıştı. Bölgedeki Müslümanlara uygulanan dini ve kültürel baskı kampanyası hakkındaki bu raporlarda, Müslümanların, Çin hükümetinin “eğitim merkezleri aracılığıyla dönüşüm”, “karşı aşırılık merkezleri” ve son zamanlarda uluslararası eleştiriler karşısında “meslekî eğitim kampları” adı altında tel örgülerden oluşan kamp ağında gözaltına alındıkları ve hapsedildikleri anlatılmıştır. Hükümet bu çabaların terörizme bir yanıt olduğunu açıklamıştır. Gerçekten de bu kamplar, hükümetin Sincan’daki Müslüman azınlık nüfusun “terörizm, ayrılıkçılık ve dini aşırılığı” olarak algılanan eylemlerini ortadan kaldırmak için on yıllardır süren çabalarının bir uzantısı olarak mantıklı görülebilir. Bölge ve ülke, plansız kitle şiddeti spazmlarının yanı sıra, yıllarca süren ayrımcılık ve zulümden ötürü Uygur umutsuzluğundan doğmuş, kasıtlı şiddet olaylarını da yaşamıştı. Bununla birlikte, hükümetin gelecekteki çekişmeleri önlemek için uyguladığı mevcut politikalar, çoğu Uygur’un potansiyel aşırılık yandaşı olduğu varsayımına dayandırılmış gibi görünmektedir.

The engineers’ ethos can be explained by the composition of the population (mainly male, highly educated, at ease with science and coming from upper middle class families). But this ethos is also influenced by
the graduates’ secondary socialization in the engineering education and at work. In this chapter, the author sets out to investigate the influence of the involvement of engineering students in a development-oriented association on their career path. The research is based on a large number of ex-members of the association “Engineers without Borders” in France. In this chapter, the author analyses by means of online CVs and interviews with ISF present-time staff the professional path of a few main figures of the 27-year-old association.

Appropriate open defecation free (ODF) sustainability interventions are key to further mobilise communities to consume sanitation and hygiene products and services that enhance household’s quality of life and embed household behavioural change for heathier communities. This study aims to develop a logistic regression derived risk algorithm to estimate a 12-month ODF slippage risk and externally validate the model in an independent data set. ODF slippage occurs when one or more toilet adequacy parameters are no longer present for one or more toilets in a community. Data in the Zambia district health information software for water sanitation and hygiene management information system for Chungu and Chabula chiefdoms was used for the study. The data was retrieved from the date of chief Chungu and Chabula chiefdoms' attainment of ODF status in October 2016 for 12 months until September 2017 for the development and validation data sets respectively. Data was assumed to be missing comp...