ANDROID

ANDROID is an Erasmus academic network that aims to promote co-operation and innovation among European Higher Education to increase society’s resilience to disasters of human and natural origin. GDRC is a partner of this network and Professor Richard Haigh is the Project Manager of the ANDROID Network.

The network’s teaching and research is concerned with what resilience is, what it means to society, and how societies might achieve greater resilience in the face of increasing threats from natural and human induced hazards. The network is creating a European approach that will help us understand the attributes that enable physical, socio-cultural, politico-economic and natural systems to adapt, by resistance or changing, in order to reach and maintain an acceptable level of functioning. The network is also raising awareness and promoting a common understanding among stakeholders of the importance of disaster resilience education and the essential role of European HEIs in improving society’s ability to increase disaster resilience.

The conference will constitute the third Annual Conference of the network, following previous events in Estonia and Cyprus. The conference will include several special features linked to the activities of the network:

• The ANDROID virtual network is a virtual hub for the project. Using Joomla, a free and open source content management platform, the virtual network provides a broad range of functionality that facilitates administration and coordination across partner institutions: collaboration and communication tools; information handling and exchange; project management tools; data collection tools; and, intra-network dissemination.
• The Doctoral School is a fully coordinated, innovative, and international interdisciplinary doctoral teaching and research programme focused on the most salient issues and features shaping society’s ability to tackle the challenges posed by natural and human induced hazards. Further details about the ANDROID Doctoral School are detailed in the next section.
• A pan-European survey identifies, collates and disseminates good practices for inter-disciplinary working in research and teaching that explores what resilience is, what it means to society, and how societies might achieve greater resilience in the face of increasing threats from natural and human induced hazards.
• The inventory of European disaster resilience education describes, analyses, and compares disaster resilience related education programmes in order to establish existing capacity among European HEIs to address the threat posed by hazards of natural and human origin.
• A survey assesses the capacity of local government’s public administrators in European urban areas to address disaster risk.
• The network’s Special Interest Groups (SIGs), which represent the particular research and teaching concerns of groups of members, selected Venice and its territory as an emblematic case study of a region that could be affected by cross-border disastrous events. A series of studies have been undertaken around Venice and its territory.
• An Open Educational Resources (OER) platform hosts digitised materials offered freely and openly for educators, students and self-learners to use and reuse for teaching, learning and research.
• The roadmap for European education in developing societal resilience to disasters, a key output of the ANDROID network, planned for release in late 2014, will bring together results from other ANDROID activities, including two survey projects and research special interest groups. It is expected that roadmap will set an agenda for educational policy in the field.

For further information about the ANDROID network, visit www.disaster-resilience.net.

The periodic ANDROID Exchange newsletter, which provides regular updates about the network and its activities, can be downloaded from the ANDROID website. (http://www.disaster-resilience.net/index.php/publications/publications)

For further details on the project, please see the ANDROID website.

The Principal Investigator of ANDROID is Professor Richard Haigh, who is based at the Global Disaster Resilience Centre, University of Huddersfield E-mail. r.haigh@hud.ac.uk