Honours students put engineering into action to build disaster resilience
Applying theory to solve real world challenges is a core part of the student experience for engineering students at the University of Sydney. Humanitarian engineering might be a lesser-known field, but with escalating impacts of changing climate, students are finding its relevance pertinent to solve increasingly complex problems.
As part of their final year honour thesis research in their civil engineering degrees, Lauren Hocking, Molly Tuit, and Isabella Lynn spent six weeks in the Philippines hosted by the University of the Philippines Resilience Institute (UPRI) and had the chance to conduct fieldwork. Connecting with research projects under the Sydney Environment Institute (SEI) and the Sydney Southeast Asia Centre (SSEAC), the students immersed themselves in Filipino culture and led interviews and forums with community members and stakeholders to understand how social infrastructure, nature-based solutions, and participatory coastal planning can reduce disaster and climate change impacts.
Why humanitarian engineering?
For the students, it was the opportunity to explore different ways theory might lead to tangible benefits for communities.
“It’s easy to get caught up in the technical aspects of civil engineering without always considering the broader impact of our work,” explains Molly. “Hearing about this program excited me because it offered a chance to explore the indirect impacts of infrastructure and our work on different communities.”
I was drawn to humanitarian engineering as a way to bridge technical skills with social responsibility.
For Isabella, her motivation stemmed from her mother’s work in Myanmar that sparked her lifelong interest in exploring new places. “I was able to visit Myanmar many times and it gave me exposure to the challenges of the developing world,” she says. “It sparked my own interest in how my degree can facilitate access to infrastructure in less developed countries, especially in post-disaster landscapes.”
Where theory meets practice
For Lauren, the program was the perfect setting to balance an intellectually challenging topic with new cultural experiences.
“We felt so welcomed into the community, and were invited to multiple dinners, lunches and other activities. It was a lot of fun – and a lot of food!” she recalls. “Academically, learning how to conduct qualitative research and interviewing community members and leaders was a great experience.”
The cultural immersion, alongside the challenges and rewarding outcomes of the experience, was what made the program special.
“Standing out as a foreigner created an initial barrier to immersion,” shares Molly. “But over time, understanding and adapting to these differences became a part of the learning experience.”
“A major highlight was also working alongside local engineers, community members and a broader research team, whose insights added depth and different perspectives to this project.”
This opportunity was invaluable in providing data for my honours thesis project and getting to personally experience and connect with the culture and way of life of the country I was researching.
Learning through challenges
For Isabella, the biggest challenge was being in an unfamiliar country and out of her comfort zone for an extended period of time. “As the trip progressed and I became more familiar in the environment that I was in, I learnt to adapt and became more adventurous.”
This setting framed the ideal learning environment to understand the impact of infrastructure on communities as part of their immersion.
Through the process of collecting and now analysing the data from the Philippines, it has informed my own thinking on the positive benefits and need for further research regarding nature-based solutions.
“Much of the data collected demonstrates that mangroves are a vital resource for disaster resilience and should be prioritised as climate buffer infrastructure solutions,” shares Isabella.
For Molly, the experience – both the cultural and the research process – aligned with her project objectives and helped build a greater understanding of evolving infrastructure approaches. “Our study underscored that mangroves and other nature-based solutions provide multifaceted benefits to coastal communities, extending beyond just physical protection. We observed a tendency within communities to favour concrete, hard-infrastructure solutions.”
About the Disaster Risk in Philippines global mobility program
The fieldwork was funded by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade’s New Colombo Plan (NCP). The field school is a component of the humanitarian engineering specialisation, offering students the ability to build cross-cultural skills and apply their technical engineering skills to work with marginalised communities.
Lauren Hocking is a 2024 SEI Honours Fellow. Molly Tuit and Isabella Lynn were supported through SEI research collaboration project on climate infrastructure buffers.