Innovation in the course disaster risk management to improve the university student's competence for multidisciplinary and participatory work

The ability to work in multidisciplinary teams and communicate solutions efficiently is one of the main requirements asked for by employers and international accreditation committees to engineering graduates around the world. However, traditionally the curricular contents of each professional career related to the construction sector, emphasizes the application of its specific knowledge in an isolated manner. This is a reality in Peru as well. Engineering students are neither trained to work in teams nor in multidisciplinary projects. This hinders the production of projects with a holistic vision and the ability to respond with greater relevance to the needs and physical and social characteristics of different territories. This document presents the results of an innovation project in undergraduate university education oriented to the development of the students' skills for working in teams and in multidisciplinary endeavors in a Disaster Risk Management (DRM) course. The project follows three lines of action: (1) Redesigning of the curricular content of a Civil Engineering specialty course to integrate professors and students from the Architecture and Urban Planning specialty. (2) Working in coordination with an Architecture and Urban Planning specialty course, focusing jointly on a common problem situation and a carrying out a case study including desktop and field work. (3) Identifying an intermediate city on the Northern coast of Peru affected negatively by climate change as case study, aiming for the students to develop risk management plans and public space design. The course's theoretical, methodological and procedural contents are aimed at conducting a risk diagnosis and delivering solution schemes. These contents include participatory and social responsibility academic methodologies that combine local knowledge and technical know-how in order to generate new knowledge. Innovation is applied to the production of information through two participatory workshops: the first one for risk diagnosis and solution guidelines, and the second one for validation of the solutions. The workshops comprised field work, urban reconnaissance walks, work tables and presentations, carried on by various groups composed by professors, students, and local actors (authorities, municipal and sectorial officials, local undergraduate students and local residents). Participation of local actors in these activities was key and contributed to their own capacity building. Professors and students acted as counselors and benefitted from the local actors' expertise. The improvement of the students' skills through a multidisciplinary and participatory approach was a positive achievement. This becomes evident in the integration of the solution criteria proposed by the Architecture and Urban Planning and Civil Engineering students in both courses. The multidisciplinary and participatory experience went beyond the academic field, since the projects were co-produced with the local actors, validated by them and delivered to the municipality. The city authorities included them in their plans for future actions.