Activity 8:  Support for joint research and curriculum development in the selected universities

During the project period, support for post graduate research and curriculum development has been provided to each selected universities depending on the specific needs and requirements as per the discipline. The curriculum is specific to the socio-economic and hazard environment of each country.

In UGM, with the MSc course on Geo-informatics for Disaster Management in place, further discussion were held and support was provided as a preparation for the planned UGM-ITC joint MSc on Spatial Planning and Disaster Risk Management. Few UGM selected students also participated in ITC to test out the MSc supervision procedure in preparation for the joint MSc program scheduled for September 2006.

IIRS’ MSc course on Geoinformation for Hazard and Risk Analysis was developed with support from ITC  and the support continues and IIRS plans to review its syllabus and identify broad research themes with an expert committee.

The University of Ruhuna has approved a 3-credit course curriculum on Natural Disaster Management and Natural Hazard studies  in Sri Lanka. A few case studies were also developed on the applications of IT&C in hazard specific mapping. RU also explored the opportunities in developing course curriculum for Undergraduate program on GIS and RS Application for Disaster Management Application

CMU is continuously developing new subjects related to disaster and development to be integrated into new master program in Disaster Management.

Technical assistance to the Master Programmes on Disaster Management at (PGIS) in Peradeniya University, Sri Lanka, BRAC University, Bangladesh was materialized as an additional effort under the project.