Enhancing the capacity of Sri Lankan higher education institutions to meet post disaster recovery challenges

Sri Lanka has been identified as one of the worst affected countries from the December 2004 tsunami. Despite large number of relief programmes initiated within Sri Lanka, it has been admitted that the county is yet to recover from the devastation. Among many other reasons lack if intellectual capacities related to the matter has been identified as a major reason behind the largely unsuccessful recovery attempts. These capacity gaps can be traced back to the fact that disaster management related disciplines have not been implemented sufficiently within Sri Lankan higher education institutions. Addressing this issue, the European and Asian Infrastructure Advantage (EURASIA) research project is initiated which aims at developing a joint curriculum for Built Environment education through an international collaboration between five European and Asian Built Environment educational institutions. In this context, the primary objective of this paper is to discuss the development of a joint curricular by comparing and assessing the needs and barriers of both the continents. A specific framework has also been developed to assess the compatibility of a developed module or a programme within a specific institution. The paper primarily discusses the methodology adopted for the development of the joint curriculum. Further, the outcomes of the compatibility assessments and skills audits which have been conducted as part of the joint curriculum development have also been discussed with special emphasis give to analyse the applicability of the joint curriculum within context of post tsunami Sri Lanka.