Using Information Technology to Incorporate Natural Hazards and Mitigation Strategies in the Civil Engineering Curriculum

Natural and environmental hazards include earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, hurricanes, floods, landslides, and droughts, among several others. These hazards present high risk to human lives and infrastructure. This is particularly true when such systems affect populated areas, devastating homes, highways, buildings, and social structure. A key aspect of natural hazard mitigation is the implementation of adequate strategies for data collection, processing, and sharing. This implementation can be prior to a natural disaster event for purposes of risk assessments and planning or postevent for disaster relief efforts and to document and learn from these case histories. In this paper, the authors present their experience in developing and implementing a course on natural hazards, which also focused on the benefits of using information technology (IT)-based solutions for natural hazard risk management. In the United States, most civil engineering (CE) curricula offer elective courses focusing primarily on traditional CE specialty areas (e.g., structures, geotechnical, hydraulics, environmental, construction management, and transportation). Therefore, there is typically no formal education in natural disasters in undergraduate CE curricula despite the critical role that CE professionals play in natural hazard risk mitigation and relief activities. The purpose of this article is to present an overview of the course developed in the CE department at the University of Puerto Rico at Mayagüez (UPRM) and highlight how the use of IT solutions was integrated in a seamless way as a fundamental component of the course. The inclusion of IT allowed students to participate in the development of an up-to-date technology-based system to collect and manage natural hazard data.