University partners with municipality to lower disaster risk

A large provincial university in the north-east of Thailand is at the forefront of a campaign using digital technologies to create ‘smart cities’ in partnership with local municipalities and central government agencies, and to build knowledge resources and tools that can be used in mitigating natural disasters in the region.

Mahasarakham University (MSU), with over 42,000 students spread over three campuses in the provincial town of Maha Sarakham – a region of paddy fields crisscrossed with waterways irrigating the land – is rapidly gaining a reputation for leading the way in helping local municipalities to develop sustainable cities, despite its location. (The nearest railway station or airport is 70 km away in Khon Kaen.)

“We believe that universities have a crucial role to play in addressing the pressing challenges of our time,” MSU President Professor Prayook Srivilai told University World News. While the traditional role of universities has been to educate students, “we are also now focusing on creating new knowledge and finding practical solutions to real-world problems”.

“The university is helping in several ways in working with the Mahasarakham Municipality to make the city more resilient to disasters,” Srivilai noted, pointing to research, education, training and community engagement as areas of engagement.

The first university-municipality partnership

The university recently became the first university in Thailand to partner with a local municipality to support the disaster resilience programme of the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) known as Making Cities Resilient 2030 (MCR2030).

“We are teaching the people about disaster preparedness and response,” Srivilai said, including training officials in these areas. “We are working with the community to develop disaster plans and improve early warning systems.”

In November 2022 the UNDRR’s MCR2030 initiative brought together 17 Thai universities for the inaugural MCR2030 training for local universities under the Thai Network for Disaster Resilience, in partnership with the Thai Disaster Preparedness Foundation, the UN Development Programme (UNDP) and UNDRR.

It helped strengthen the capacity of academia to work with local governance on urban resilience, emphasising the crucial role of universities in providing technical support to local governments on their journey towards resilience.

Introducing resilience tools

As part of its partnership with Mahasarakham Municipality, MSU introduced specific tools developed by the UNDRR for making cities more resilient, including knowledge sharing and early warning systems.

The university provided technical support in using the tools to assess disaster risks, such as floods – the main cause of natural disasters in the area – which also leads to diseases like hand, foot and mouth disease, dengue haemorrhagic fever, diarrhoea and influenza.

Data gathered by the country’s Department of Disease Control during floods are entered into an MSU database and can be used for prevention of disease, to improve preparedness for treatment and to ensure medical supplies are available to treat flood-related diseases.

The university and municipality participated in a training session last year at the UNDRR Global Education and Training Institute in Incheon, South Korea, gaining practical insights into the application of the Ten Essentials for Making Cities Resilient and the Disaster Resilience Scorecard developed under UNDRR.

MSU has also taken on a mentorship role, guiding other universities such as Naresuan University in northern Thailand, on university-led training for local government using Disaster Resilience Scorecard tools.

“This dynamic exchange fostered city-to-city learning and the sharing of best practices, playing a pivotal role in bolstering the resilience of municipalities throughout Thailand,” said UNDRR in a statement on their website.

Helping municipalities digitise

MSU’s Smart City Solutions (SCS) unit is an important example of how universities are helping to introduce digitisation at the municipal level, where data collected and stored can be used by municipalities and other government agencies to build and improve city infrastructure, as well as aiding them in responding to disasters.

During a visit to MSU’s SCS laboratory, Associate Professor Tarawut Boonlua, head of the Research and Development Unit of SCS, told University World News: “The concept of Smart City Solutions revolves around using technology and data-driven approaches to enhance urban life.”

He said with so many villages within each municipality, they deal at the director level in municipalities and with village leaders to gather information, for example, on land use, population numbers, the elderly, disability in the community, water availability, services, and so on.

“After that we build this platform [using the software] to reflect the municipality’s life and facilities,” Boonlua said, pointing to a computer database one of his postgraduate students at the unit was working on.

The SCS project comes under the university’s faculty of architecture, urban design and creative arts. It takes an interdisciplinary approach to utilise a variety of data to make “informed decisions about land use, housing density and other critical factors”, he said.

“It requires a significant amount of data to analyse and manage city functions effectively. The goal is to create a centralised platform where all this data, ranging from social and economic, to environment information, is integrated,” added Boonlua.

“Once the data is in place, city authorities can analyse it to address pressing urban challenges and improve overall sustainability.”

Training students and municipal staff

The university also conducts regular workshops for students and municipal staff. “We train about 500 municipality staff each year,” said Boonlua. “We give them access to software and guide them in the use of it. We consult on how to apply it to address the Sustainable Development Goals.”

Professor Srivilai argued that universities are no longer just places to learn facts and get a degree. “They are also places to develop skills, solve problems and make a positive impact on the world,” adding that teaching students how to think critically, communicate effectively and work in teams is important.

“By combining education with research and development, we are preparing our students for a future in which innovation and problem-solving are essential skills.”

Srivilai pointed to 2,200 programmes on offer at the university. “Every curriculum we provide [involves] not only classroom [study] but also extra-curricular outside activity,” he said, adding that students need to understand the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) because “they need to know about the problems of the community and how to assist in solving them”.

He said integrating the SDGs into the university ranking system “will incentivise institutions to prioritise sustainability in their teaching, research and community engagement activities”.