ANDROID: An Inter-disciplinary Academic Network that Promotes Co-operation and Innovation among European Higher Education to Increase Society's Resilience to Disasters

AbstractUsing knowledge, innovation and education to build a culture of safety and resilience at all levels is one of five priorities for action (PFA) that were identified in the Hyogo Framework for Action (HFA). The responsibility for such capacity building resides largely with educators such as higher education institutes, but the complexity of resilience poses a number of challenges. This paper describes ANDROID, an EU funded international partnership of higher education institutes and key actors in disaster resilience, which has been formed to develop innovative European education. ANDROID is based on an inter-disciplinary consortium of partners that comprises scientists from applied, human, social and natural disciplines. ANDROID set out to achieve this aim through a series of inter-linked projects, identified as work packages and led by a sub-group of international partners. This paper describes these projects and highlights key outputs achieved to date: an inter-disciplinary doctoral school; a survey capturing and sharing innovative approaches to inter-disciplinary working; a survey of European education to map teaching and research programmes in disaster resilience; a survey analysing the capacity of European public administrators to address disaster risk; emerging research and teaching concerns in disaster resilience; and, open educational resources