2023 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Humanitarian engineering is the application of skills or services for humanitarian aid purposes; and with crises occurring at an ever-increasing rate, more and more people and systems are being affected. There are global challenges facing the world with regard to accessible clean water, shelter, waste disposal, food security, and health. These challenges present opportunities for engineers to address real-world problems in collaborative teams, and propose viable solutions that take into account not only technical issues, but also issues of equity, culture, religion, society, and politics. Humanitarian academic exercises like the one described here, introduces students to the many of these skills that are necessary to better address today’s complex societal challenges.

First year introductory engineering courses are where engineering schools often make their first impressions on brand new undergraduate students, and are spaces to actively introduce them to engineering tools and processes in a safe and supportive environment. This paper discusses how one such introductory engineering course used a team-based multi-disciplinary humanitarian engineering project to teach students about the design process, relevant socio-technical factors, team collaboration, and various forms of effective communications. Additionally, students’ self-reported engineering identity and sense of belonging within their school following completion of this project were assessed.

Each student team was assigned one block of a Rohingya Refugee Camp in Cox’s Bazaar, Bangladesh that was recently destroyed by fire. For their block, teams were tasked with re-building the camp by designing engineering solutions for the following five camp components: a) general camp layout and design, b) emergency shelter, c) water access, sanitation, and hygiene, d) food and non-food distribution and tracking, and e) water-borne disease tracking. As teams were assigned blocks within the same camp, students had to coordinate with other teams to ensure cohesiveness and continuity.

Throughout the ten-week project, teams were given access to a panel of subject-matter expertise, which included experts in the five camp components, but also in humanitarian emergency preparedness and response, including the project manager for site maintenance engineering for the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh. Camp block topographical maps, GIS files, filmed footage, and block demographics were also provided, along with personal stories of some of the refugees involved.

The final deliverables for this project included a written proposal, using the Gates Foundation Concept Note as a template, and a seven-minute pitch of their designs to an imaginary investment firm. Regular home works were due along the way to the final deliverables to ensure that students stayed on track and received plenty of feedback at each step.

A mixed methods approach, using a one group pre/post survey, was used to assess what role participation in this project had on the students’ ability to apply the design process, and on the students’ self-reported engineering identity and sense of belonging within the school community. The pre-survey was administered during the first week of the semester, and the post-survey was administered during the final week of the semester. We show that collaboration on a multi-disciplinary humanitarian engineering project improves students’ comfort level with engineering design and the complex human factors that must be considered to address such challenges; and that this in turn contributes to students’ engineering identity and sense of belonging.