Towards a Culture of Prevention: Including Disaster Management in Engineering Undergraduate Programs

Abstract eng:
The earthquake of 2010 revealed that Chilean communities were not well prepared to respond to large magnitude disasters. There is a long history of destructive earthquakes and tsunamis in Chile that local engineers have been able to take into consideration when designing buildings and facilities and that scholars have studied profusely. However, the knowledge produced by researchers has not been properly transferred to the communities. With this diagnosis in mind, the Faculty of Engineering of the Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción (UCSC) decided to incorporate subjects related to disaster management cycle in the curricula of Civil Engineering and Geological Engineering. For that reason, a course was designed to providing basic knowledge about disaster management. The course’s design included national and international experiences regarding the disaster management. The course seeks to initiate the culture of prevention in engineering students, considering the role they may have to face within the community during an emergency due to their job positions and academic background. This course has been offered for three consecutive semesters and recently it has incorporated practical activities through the application of service-learning methodology. This article describes the entire experience of implementing this course in the regular curriculum of both undergraduate programs and the challenges related to performing real multidisciplinary project in collaboration with a community.

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