The Asian Preparedness Partnership (APP) was established through a partnership between the Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre (ADPC) and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to improve the preparedness and emergency response to disasters in Asia by strengthening humanitarian leadership and technical capacity of national governments and local humanitarian, and the private sector organizations.
A team led by Dr. Chandana Siriwardana, Department of Civil Engineering, University of Moratuwa, has won in an international competition organized by Asian Preparedness Partnership (APP) funded by Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The team was among the six equal winners out of 51 candidates representing six countries competed for the "Social Innovation Grand Challenge" organized by APP.
For this competition, the Department of Civil Engineering team partnered with the University of Colombo, Disaster Management Centre (DMC) - Sri Lanka, Federation of Sri Lankan Local Government Authorities (FSLGA), and sustainability group of Dialog Axiata PLC. The Department of Civil Engineering Team was supported by Research Engineer Chamika Kannagara.
The innovation challenge aim was to identify, curate, nurture, and promote innovations derived from local actors in APP countries for addressing pertinent Disaster Risk Management (DRM)-related challenges. The competition was conducted in a few phases, and it was set up on 4th May 2021 and planned to perform the selected innovations within six months of the period ending on April 2022. It was conducted under three thematic areas. The Department of Civil Engineering team had proposed an innovative solution for strengthening the emergency operations, response systems, and mechanisms in the Sri Lankan context. This winning team has successfully pitched their proposed solution at the innovation conclave of the competition, in front of the ADPC panel and funders of this project, Bill & Melinda Gate foundation representatives. After the evaluation process, the final six winners of the competition were announced in early October 2021.
