A Model for Sustainable Humanitarian Engineering Projects

Bernard Amadei, Robyn Sandekian and Evan Thomas
Additional contact information
Bernard Amadei: Mortenson Center in Engineering for Developing Communities, Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering, University of Colorado at Boulder / 428 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309-0428, USA
Robyn Sandekian: Mortenson Center in Engineering for Developing Communities, Department of Civil, Environmental and Architectural Engineering, University of Colorado at Boulder / 428 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309-0428, USA
Evan Thomas: Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences, University of Colorado at Boulder / 429 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309-0429, USA

Sustainability, 2009, vol. 1, issue 4, 1-19

Abstract: The engineering profession should embrace a new mission statement—to contribute to the building of a more sustainable, stable, and equitable world. Recently, engineering students and professionals in the United States have shown strong interest in directly addressing the needs of developing communities worldwide. That interest has taken the form of short-and medium-term international trips through Engineers Without Borders—USA and similar organizations. There are also several instances where this kind of outreach work has been integrated into engineering education at various US institutions such as the University of Colorado at Boulder. This paper addresses the challenges and opportunities associated with balancing two goals in engineering for humanitarian development projects: (i) effective sustainable community development, and (ii) meaningful education of engineers. Guiding principles necessary to meet those two goals are proposed.

Keywords: engineering education; interrelationships between people; resources; environment; and development; hands-on projects; humanitarian development (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/1/4/1087/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/1/4/1087/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:1:y:2009:i:4:p:1087-1105:d:6265

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().