Disaster Resilience Education Capacity Building in Latin America

In March 2018, Dr Sittimont Kanjanabootra, Dr Jason Von Meding and Dr Helen Giggins joined academics from the Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil; Universidad Diego Portales, Santiago; Chile; and Universidad Javeriana, Colombia in Chile where Dr Jeff Walter from UDP hosted a project launch event. They also lead a workshop and attended site visits.

The Disaster Resilience Education Capacity Building Project is to expand on existing disaster resilience education networks at the University of Newcastle that have built on previous projects over the past 4 years. These projects were lead by Dr Jason Von Meding and included academics from China, Taiwan, Thailand, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines and Australia. The COALAR project is lead by Dr Sittimont Kanjanabootra and included an academic team from the University of Newcastle. The COALAR project was funded by the council on Australia Latin America Relations (COALAR) in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) and by the University of Newcastle. The purpose of the project is to enable knowledge sharing in disaster resilience areas.

The next phase of the project will see the research team carry out a series of workshops in each of their respective countries, based on the SENDAI Framework curriculum assessment tool that has been developed from our existing education network projects.