USAID: US, Indian univ to create curriculum on infra resilience

WASHINGTON: Educational institutions of higher learning in India and the United States are working to create a curriculum on infrastructure resilience, Samantha Power, Administrator for the USAID, said on Monday.

“We are going to be working with universities like Virginia Tech and the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) to create a curriculum on infrastructure resilience, offer certification courses for infrastructure management and support research that is focused on infrastructure resilience,” Power said.

Last year, Power had announced a $ 5 million commitment to establish a partnership between American and Indian institutions of higher education. On Monday, Power handed over the co-chairmanship of the Governing Council and Executive Committee to France, represented by Ambassador Aurelian Lechevallier.

Power said these kinds of education, fellowship, scholarship, training and certification investments are ones that have ripple effects for generations to come -- as people get trained and bring their training to bear within governments, in the private sector and beyond. Through programmes like the CDRI Fellowship Programme, fellows around the world are leading efforts to innovate solutions that are addressing real problems in the here and now, she said.

“For example, in Australia and Sri Lanka,

Infrastructure management certification programmes will be offered and research on infrastructure resiliences will be supported – Samantha Power, USAID Administrator

CDRI fellows engineered a groundbreaking fibre optic sensor system to detect water pressures and ground movements in real time. This helps get earlier warnings out for potential disasters like landslides, so this can be a complete lifesaver,” Power said.