Empathic Design in Engineering Education and Practice: An Approach for Achieving Inclusive and Effective Community Resilience

Saleh Afroogh, Amir Esmalian, Jonan Phillip Donaldson and Ali Mostafavi
Additional contact information
Saleh Afroogh: Department of Philosophy, The State University of New York at Albany, Albany, NY 12203, USA
Amir Esmalian: UrbanResilience.AI Lab, Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77840, USA
Jonan Phillip Donaldson: Center for Teaching Excellence, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77840, USA
Ali Mostafavi: UrbanResilience.AI Lab, Zachry Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77840, USA

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 7, 1-19

Abstract: In this paper, we argue that an inclusive and effective community resilience approach requires empathy as a missing component in the current engineering education and practice. An inclusive and effective community resilience approach needs to be human-centric, individual- and communal-sensitive, justice-oriented, and values-based consistent. In this paper, we argue that three kinds of empathy, namely cognitive, affective, and conative, play a central role in creating and sustaining an inclusive and effective approach to community resilience. Finally, we discuss empathetic education through learning theories and analytics skills to cultivate empathy in engineering education. Cultivating empathy in engineering education could help advance the impact and contribution of engineering to well-being.

Keywords: empathy; community resilience; human infrastructure resilience; empathic design; justice; engineering education; engineering practice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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