Challenges and Approaches to Humanitarian Engineering

Humanitarian engineering is to provide disadvantaged individuals and communities with engineering solutions that improve lives and livelihoods. The provision of water, energy, food, shelter, energy and information are some of the issues targeted by this "discipline". Humanitarian Engineers could be the key towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Currently, UNESCO is working to strengthen engineering education through curricula development and capacity building. It is also incorporating sustainability topics into engineering education by highlighting the need for green technology in engineering applications. The careful use of resources in a way that does not compromise the environment or deplete the materials for future generations is called sustainable engineering. Both sustainable engineering and humanitarian engineering require a highly interdisciplinary approach since they aim to improve the quality of life for all.

The current book looks for the most recent challenges and approaches in the field of humanitarian engineering. A wide variety of topics that fall under the domain are technology-based solutions that tackle humanitarian problems. Pandemics, ageing of population, climate change, social inclusion, extreme poverty and hunger, maternal health and child mortality, education for all, are some indicative topics that could be addressed by technology. Early warning and alerting mechanisms for physical disasters, green engineering approaches, mobile health solutions for remote and underserved populations, are some paradigms that fall under the researched theme. The book is accepting research, real-life case studies, innovative models and approaches, and other work that lies in the presented theme.

The proposed collection of chapters will provide an overview of the present thinking and state-of-the-art developments in humanitarian engineering. The book aims at providing latest research findings and their practical implementations, as well as new formulations, solutions, and case studies for tackling humanitarian contemporary issues. The book will give a unique opportunity to stakeholders, researchers and the academic community working in the aforementioned domains to understand the implications and solutions to a variety of topics. The book is anticipated to trigger further research on issues directly related to the proposed humanitarian topics.