Humanitarian and International Development Panel

This framework, developed by the Institution’s Humanitarian and International Development Panel, is designed to illustrate the types of skills that structural engineers will require to be successful in the development sector.

This article describes the climate-positive design for the campus of the Rwanda Institute for Conservation Agriculture. 

This EEFIT Field Mission report details the effects of the Mw6.9 earthquake which struck the Aegean coasts of Greece and Turkey on 30 October 2020.

This article provides a realistic overview of the practical and ethical considerations when seeking to work in the sector.

This evolving series of FAQs provides guidance on considerations when acting in the humanitarian and international development sector.

An introduction to the goals and how structural engineers can use them to tackle the climate crisis and create a better world.

This case study explores how emergency shelters were made more resilient in the Rohingya refugee camps in Bangladesh.

This resource features two case studies. They describe how engineers engaged with the local community following the earthquake of 2015.

Shelter plays an essential role in post-disaster situations both in saving lives and in promoting early recovery by helping to restore dignity, support livelihoods and re-establish communities. To be effective shelter must be of adequate quality, yet there is no commonly accepted definition of what this means. This shortfall is compounded by the lack of expertise or institutional knowledge within individual organisations, high staff turnover and the large number of new actors that enter the sector for the first time in post-disaster situations. To some extent this has been overcome by the introduction of standards and indicators in recent post-disaster responses combined with recent initiatives to reform co-ordination structures. However inconsistencies in terminology, approach and interpretation prevail and quality is often compromised due to post-disaster timescales and budgetary constraints. This paper proposes that quality should be considered from the shelter occupant’s perspective, and whilst this will vary in different scenarios, it can be defined by 12 standard characteristics under two key headings - habitability and durability - which provide a framework for designing and subsequently monitoring and evaluating shelter programmes. Jo da Silva, MA, CEng, MICE, MIStructE Associate Director, Arup