The convergence of COVID-19 with natural hazards have reshaped the disaster riskscape in Southeast Asia, which has been deteriorated by the climate changes and the current environmental crisis. In their attempt to deal with the pandemic Nepal and Bangladesh have been also hit by multiple natural disasters (cyclones, heatwaves, landslides, and volcanic eruptions). RISK-E-SCAPE project encourages the recovery path from this expanded risk environment through the capacity building of Partner Countries HEIs in disaster health management and public health. The project objects to address the growing challenges of climate change and environmental degradation in Southeast Asia, providing academic activities in disaster health and environmental studies to Partner Countries HEIs through the development of open courses, the design and implementation of drills in Nepal and Bangladesh as well as the establishment of RISK-E-SCAPE Hubs as nexus of academic community, policy makers, civil society organizations for the preparedness, respond and recovery in environmental disasters. RISK-E-SCAPE promotes the capacity building at a multiprofessional and multidisciplinary level in disaster health in environmental crisis, strengthening the mechanism for multi-sectoral coordination and collaboration concerning the health sector and disaster management as well as preparing local authorities for emergency disaster preparedness. The project promotes equity in the educational activities, as well as the recovery and reconstruction process with particular attention to women and vulnerable or marginalised groups from low-income and/or rural area. Furthermore, it supports the Exchange of experiences, expertise and networking and bridging the EU acquis in pandemic/disaster health/ crisis in (SouthEast) Asia while supporting SDGs achievements

Engineering has a pivotal role to play in solving humanitarian challenges, enabling communities to progress towards sustainable development. Because the issues of humanitarianism are not just engineering problems, there is need to introduce new designs of engineering education to embrace and exploit combinational expertise in community-based engineering. ENHANCE aims at nurturing humanitarian attributes through engineering education for serving unsupported communities effectively and responsibly, in identifying problems and defining sustainable solutions. The novelty of ENHANCE lies in integrating highly diverse, yet complementary, expertise in engineering Higher Education (HE). The objectives of the project involve: (a) mapping professional attributes for mitigating humanitarian challenges over the next 15 years; (b) assessing and evaluating current graduate engineering programmes in Partner Institutions under the enablers needed to ensure humanitarian attributes to graduates; (c) setting up tools for evaluating graduate engineering programmes; (c) building capacity in the field of community-based engineering with interventions in curriculum content, assessment and feedback, methods of delivery; (d) tasting, adopting and implementing in current curricula innovative (i.e. inclusive, interdisciplinary, problem-based) teaching and learning methodologies; (e) developing and testing the ENHANCE Training Kit for staff development/training. Outputs of the project will be disseminated to audiences from HE educators and students in the partner countries; modern media (podcasts, video’s, etc.) will be utilised to share insights with a wide audience. ENHANCE will allow us to ensure advancement of community-based engineering directly to a range of Official Development Assistance (ODA) recipients and to instigate longer-term developments with beneficiaries and end users. Nevertheless, outputs of this project will be applicable to many other countries facing global challenges.