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Del curso dictado por École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Introduction to Public Health Engineering in Humanitarian Contexts

91 calificaciones

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École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne

Introduction to Public Health Engineering in Humanitarian Contexts

91 calificaciones

The world is facing unprecedented humanitarian needs. Today’s humanitarian crisis tend to be greater in number, often in urban settings, longer in duration and broader in regional impact. They generate human sufferings on a greater scale, disrupt essential services, such as water supply or sanitation and put health of large population at risk. Engineers and technical specialists in water, sanitation, energy, environment, and in other related fields play a vital role to respond to these challenges and growing needs. In the humanitarian sector, they are called the public health engineers and today they are increasingly needed! Why public health engineering matters so much in humanitarian crises? And how its related activities are carrying out in such complex environment? This is what this MOOC is all about! The EPFL, EAWAG-SANDEC and ICRC have decided to partner to guide you through this introduction to the fascinating field of public health engineering in humanitarian contexts.

De la lección

Humanitarian contexts

During this week, the humanitarian context in which public health engineering activities take place is presented. We will see how protracted conflicts affect urban essential services, such as water supply and sanitation, resulting in public health issues.

Summary of the week3:02

Conoce a los instructores

Christoph Lüthi
Dr.
Sanitation, Water and Solid Waste for Development / Eawag
Javier Cordoba

Water & Habitat Unit / ICRC

Congratulation, you made it through week two about the humanitarian context.

I hope you get a better understanding of these challenging environments.

During this week, we have seen that the humanitarian system is complex,

with many stakeholders not always coordinated.

Despite that, they are increasingly challenged,

especially in current conflicts.

Humanitarian principles that are impartiality, neutrality,

independence, and humanity must remain a reference tool to guide humanitarian action.

During this week, we have also seen that the humanitarian context,

despite urgent needs, you should not rush to the implementation of activities.

Such behavior is likely to result in inadequate projects to address critical needs.

You should ensure that adequate time and

resources are committed to assess and analyze the needs,

and formulate a strategy in order to

design effective and relevant project for the beneficiaries.

The project management cycle is a sequence of logic steps to help

you to maximize the benefits of project for the beneficiaries.

Humanitarian action has been mainly designed to

respond to the needs in acute emergencies,

and in rural environments.

However, known this, we see

an increasingly number of protracted conflicts that take place in new urban environments.

It poses new challenges.

Indeed, people in human context rely on essential services.

These services are beyond

the technical capacity and the direct physical control of the residents.

It affects the residents or the inhabitants.

These essential services such as water supply,

power supplies, sanitation are interconnected.

No electricity, no water.

This interconnectivity between essential services needs to be understood and

properly integrated into humanitarian action in order to avoid counter-project effects.

Urban services require three elements in order to

function: people, hardware, and consumables.

Disruption to an essential service

occurs when the functions of any of the critical people,

hardware, or consumables are compromised.

These three components can be affected by direct,

indirect, and cumulative impacts.

Direct impact such as damage to infrastructure from

explosive munitions attracts the most attention.

But field experiments suggest that the cumulative impact is

the most destructive and the most difficult to recover from.

Humanitarian response in urban areas is a major challenge of today's humanitarian crisis.

Further information of these critical issues can be found in these ICRC publication.

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