2012 IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology Conference
Humanitarian Engineering
Emerging Technologies and Humanitarian Efforts
Gary K. Conkol
Director, Conkol Computing Services
President, Northeast Ohio Professionals Chapter, Engineers Without Borders
Burton, Ohio, USA
Gary.conkol@att.net
Abstract—The level of appropriate technology for a community
has been advancing due to rapidly emerging techniques and
developments thereby turning possible applications into practical
ones. This publication is one in a series that cross references
emerging technologies and needs in the three main humanitarian
project categories of developing communities, disaster recovery,
and redevelopment. It presents a framework for leveraging
research and development work to mutual benefit of developing
and mature communities, business and traditional help
organizations in government and non-government organizations
(NGO).
Keywords - technology, humanitarian, disaster recovery
,developing communities, sustainability, emerging technology,
research, development
Introduction
With the advent of new technologies, humanitarian projects
are taking on an efficiency and impact previously unknown.
The depth and breadth is increasing and along with it the skills
and training required. Increased interest in volunteerism and
emerging technologies has coincided with the most pervasive
communication networks ever established. The result is the
emergence of, what can be best described as, Humanitarian
Engineering (HE), which focuses engineering on technologies
that are mutually beneficial to industrial and human needs in a
sustainable way. Sustainability, defined as the balance between
the three "P"s of people, planet, and prosperity is the only
future with a future. Humanitarian engineering (HE) is the
combination of improving environment and prosperity while
meeting human needs in a mutually beneficial balance. While it
might seem to be an impossible dream, it is possible to improve
profits while making optimal use of natural resources and
meeting human needs. It is through this balance that true
sustainability can be accomplished. It may sounds like a
lifelong multigenerational scheme but it applies in short term
projects as well. Small efforts done with an eye to the HE
balance contribute significantly to overall improvement.
Humanitarian projects are described herein as those that
have as their objective, the improvement of a person or
community. The three classes of projects are a) Disaster
Recovery, b) Development, and c) Redevelopment. These are
often done under circumstances of dire need as in a natural
disaster or help to a poor developing community. Beyond the
978-0-7695-4849-4/12 $26.00 © 2012 IEEE
DOI 10.1109/GHTC.2012.41
obvious medical and immediate damage control aspects, a
significant amount of engineering content is involved. The
consequences of failure are measured in terms of human lives
yet this does not force the efforts to be conservative.
Humanitarian projects with engineering content utilize some of
the latest technology applied in the most creative ways. The
nature of the projects requires the results to be economical,
durable and self-sustaining. These are also profitable
characteristics aggressively sought in commercial projects and
measures of a successful engineer in industry.
Yet, HE projects are usually considered separate from the
more conventional engineering tasks that have a technology or
product focus. While this may be the typical engineering career
characteristic, many engineers help out in a wide variety of
humanitarian projects such as Habitat for Humanity (1),
Engineers Without Borders (2), many foundations and related
efforts. The convergence of commercial engineering
developments and humanitarian projects yields an opportunity
to advance the state of the art in those projects and provides an
educational mechanism for engineers and students.
The scope of the work considers all engineering disciplines
but focuses on those technologies that are contributory to HE
and sustainability. The three thrusts considered are the
engineering characteristics of humanitarian projects, emerging
technologies, and research and development efforts.
Subsequent work underway at this writing, cross references
emerging technologies with these needs and identifies
opportunities in research and development that would be most
beneficial.
Humanitarian Projects
Work currently being done in disaster recovery, developing,
and redeveloping areas has been reviewed for typical
characteristics. Common activities, technologies utilized, and
skill sets required were found by reviewing the most recent
disaster efforts, over 385 EWB-USA projects, and the work of
several foundations and redevelopment efforts. In this part 1
paper, these were broken down into the various engineering
disciplines and levels of technological maturity. It was found
that most efforts have a singular purpose and often miss the
opportunity to include the logical extensions of their efforts in
follow-on engineering disciplines or technology. There is a
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growing awareness of overarching plans that include multiple
disciplines in a coordinated fashion and logical growth in
technological content. A preliminary perturbation analysis
identifies technology improvements that would have significant
impact in all three project categories. In part 2, emerging
technologies are examined that have significant potential in
these characteristics. Finally, in part 3, areas of research and
development are identified by cross referencing the emerging
technologies with the humanitarian needs. Preliminary results
are presented here.
Emerging Technologies
Emerging or otherwise critical technologies are found in
lists published by a variety of sources. Around the turn of the
century many, well done, millennia studies identified future
scenarios and the research and development necessary to
supply the corresponding technologies. More recently, the
Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) has focused on
technologies important for manufacturing through both top
down and bottom up methodologies. The differences between
the efforts are often attributed to the definitions used for
“emerging”. The US Department of Defense has an extensive
technology readiness index which largely relates to commercial
availability and supportability of a technology. This has the
advantage of rating the commercial support of a technology but
sacrifices the advantages of early adoption and masks the
potential of additional research and development. The
definition of emerging technologies used herein is best
described as “breaking” or the level of maturity obtained when
a development goes beyond research lab demonstrations and
starts to appear in more than 20% of early adopters. Early
implementation of a developing technology often sacrifices
cost effectiveness and optimum performance to gain expertise
and competitive advantage for the adopter. Here, a practical
approach is taken to identify the subset of emerging
technologies that have high potential in humanitarian
environments. It is found that that these characteristics include
durability, cost effectiveness, sustainability, and other attributes
important to HE that make them highly desirable in the
commercial world as well. By cross referencing those
“breaking” technologies with HE, areas can be identified that
have high potential given a modest boost in research and
development or by leveraging development efforts.
I. Characteristics of Humanitarian Efforts
Most people are all too familiar with the hurricane, tsunami,
earthquake, fire and other disasters which occur. While the
most use of technology in this category is search and rescue
oriented, scientific advances and technology improvements
can serve not only to improve these techniques but to reduce
risk through early warning systems and advanced
communication.
Development Projects
These are the classic humanitarian projects where developing
communities are helped with the basic necessities of water,
sanitation, shelter, education, and other elements. These
projects address basic human needs including air quality,
access to clean water, sanitation, housing, and basic
transportation. There is also a growing awareness that
communication is a key enabling technology that makes a big
difference in the ability to sustain basic services. In many
developing community scenarios the next thing the
community seeks after water and food is an internet
connection.
Redevelopment Projects
This class of projects has been growing in number and
frequency in recent years. These projects are targeted at
redeveloping a community after disruption caused by war,
economic upheaval, outsourcing, environmental, or financial
impact or other events. Examples include the impact on
Former Soviet Union countries after the breakup (3) ,
environmental remedial work in the US, China, and India,
workforce retraining for areas in the US and other countries
that have lost manufacturing jobs, and even munitions
remediation (4).

Three Scenarios

The logical place to start is a review of existing humanitarian

projects that have engineering content. The vast majority fall
into the three categories of natural disaster recovery,
developing community help, and the relatively new,
redevelopment efforts. Each of these have their own
characteristics and are treated differently yet have several
common elements. These are compared in Figure 1.

Natural Disaster Recovery

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This category is especially difficult because the people being
helped remember the former condition and may not be able to
return to that same state. This is in contrast to natural disasters
where the population knows that they can seek to return to
near normal. Likewise, in the developing category, the project
or effort is creating something new so there is general
enthusiasm about the addition or betterment of a basic service
A few examples will illustrate these categories. The length of
this paper precludes the inclusion of all the case studies under
consideration, but two are especially notable.
EWB – USA – Engineers Without Borders (2) - Student
Projects
EWB is organized internationally with each country forming its
own separate affiliate. Figure 2 shows a breakout of 385 EWB-
USA projects. The most common, as can be expected, are
projects associated with water (58%) and basic construction
(21%). While all the projects are making use of new
technology where available, another 21% are born of
technologies recently developed. Newer and emerging
technologies are providing better approaches to age old
problems and enabling solutions where previously none
existed. A survey of projects in other countries echoes this
trend and includes subject areas of security, information and
communications technology (ICT), and biotechnology.
Engineers for Change (engineering.org)
This effort is a joint project between ASME, EWB, and IEEE
and catalogs needs, projects, and methods worldwide. In a
series of challenges and success stories, the web site is a very
good resource for what others are doing. While this effort is
relatively new, it has the unique characteristic of collecting
like technologies involved in similar projects.
Figure 2 EWB-USA projects
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II. Engineering Characteristics of Humanitarian
Projects
Specific engineering technologies are centric to each
humanitarian scenario and stage. In reviewing the projects and
surrounding development activities several technologies stood
out as having common usage but also in need of critical
advances. Sometimes the technology was intrinsic to the
project such as solar cells or LEDs. In other cases, the
development used or needed was in the supporting
infrastructure such as local manufacturing capability or
communications and information technology.
The UN Millennia Report (5) observed that most countries
separate activities targeted at new knowledge and those
resulting in manufacturing capabilities. This is also true in
mature nations where basic research is considered separate
from development, applied technology and industrial
activities. The UN report further observed that the
convergence of these two approaches would yield a continuum
from research and development through manufacturing ability.
It goes on to describe platform technologies which have broad
application and serve as a foundation for long term growth. In
developed nations, insight can be gained by examining the
same platform technologies and their place in industry and
educational curricula. Figure 3 shows the collection of the
technologies observed in humanitarian projects in all three
categories. These are grouped by platform technologies.
From reviewing the many examples and types of scenarios the
following list (figure 3) was assembled showing technology
versus project category. While not totally comprehensive, it
provides a starting point to review potential development and
impact.
The analysis here would be greatly aided by a standardized list
of technologies but this is elusive. There are many references
ranging from the National Academies to individual country
priorities but needed developments often cross boundaries.
Fortunately, several organizations have issued challenges or
list technologies associated with potential research work. In
Figure 4 the technology challenges are added. These are the
requests for proposals, advanced R&D funding, and other
efforts designed to promote developments deemed important
by groups that have been in the humanitarian business for a
long time such as the United Nations (5,6), US AID (7) and
others. Web sites such as Practical Action (8) do a great job of
distilling out the technologies and techniques that make a
difference worldwide. The National Academy of Engineering
challenges (9) were also added. Similar technologies were
combined for clarification. While no list can contain all the
salient technologies, subsequent tables combine the most
observed and promoted subset of technologies in use relative
to humanitarian projects.
 this, one consistent observation is that success in one category
of project is seldom introduced in others. Further insight into
this can be gained by focusing on the organizations central to
the efforts. Their mission and charter are usually focused on
one aspect of development or assistance and are limited by
resource availability. Communications and coordination
between organizations would be greatly beneficial in the area
of technology application and need.

III. Efforts to Advance Technologies

In figure 4 technology challenges are collected from a variety

of organizations. These come from published requests for
proposals, contests, and other mechanisms that organizations
use to focus work on needs they have observed. By combining
the observed needs with those identified in the various
challenges, a list of engineering needs emerges.

Figure 3 – Technology needs versus scenario Figure 4 – Known Technology Challenges

As newer technologies are implemented in developing

It is interesting to note some gaps in Figure 3. For example, communities, the rugged requirements of the site and long
under Energy and Power, most redevelopment projects do not term demands help develop and mature the applications. It
consider basic improvements in electric systems and lighting also adds to the global knowledge base associated with that
even though these could help. While there are exceptions to

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technology. The combination advances the science and
accelerates developments, often to the advantage of both the
recipients as well as the overall industrial community.
Retrofits and new implementations of the same technology
then take place in developed nations. The reverse flow of
technology transfer is an emerging trend making humanitarian
projects good commercial investments.
The use of advanced and emerging technologies is not
necessarily limited to technologically elite nations or regions.
A recent study showed that of the 62 nanotechnology efforts
being conducted on a national scale, 60% of them were in
developing or transitional economy nations (10). Furthermore,
uptake of advanced technologies in developing nations can be
faster because there is no existing infrastructure or embedded
systems to replace.
It was observed that a successful use of a technology in a one
area such as disaster recovery could have use in a developing
or redeveloping category as well. The reverse is also true but
very little crossover was noted. The critical observation is that
technologies should be shared and developed with a broader
scope in mind. A good example is the use of communication
technology in disaster recovery. In many instances it was
noted that emergency crews did not have a good way to
directly communicate between police, fire, and other agencies
on site. Subsequent advances in this area can be used in
developing countries where communication frequencies and
other technologies lack standardization thereby impeding
growth. The resources and collective experience in each
category are seldom shared which provides the opportunity to
improve each with a multi-disciplinary approach.
The same is true within a category such as development.
Projects in different countries have no direct way of
comparing technologies and techniques. Even within country
individual projects necessarily have their own goal and limited
scope but could be made better if integration with other
projects was included. The outcome of one project should be
designed to feed into the most likely follow on efforts. Several
websites attempt this and organizations such as EWB provide
a communication forum but no direct way such as standard
technical papers or database has been developed to date. Such
a database could be used to highlight particular technologies in
need of development or further research.
In the review of technology relative to humanitarian projects,
it became clear that several technologies would find much
greater application if improved even slightly. In Part 2 of this
paper, a similar process will be used to identify emerging
engineering technologies independent of the humanitarian list.
These lists are cross referenced with emerging technologies
gleamed from various engineering and manufacturing
perspectives, to identify areas likely to grow or emerge as
practical applications. In part 3, that analysis will be used to
identify gaps and potential growth areas through leveraged
research and development.
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IV. Emerging Technologies and Humanitarian Efforts
The complete list of emerging technologies, cross referenced
to the consolidated needs is not included here for space
considerations. It is the core of the current and ongoing work.
It takes the humanitarian needs and cross references them to
the platform technologies and highlights those most likely to
advance as well as gaps. The gaps are those technologies that
affect the most humanitarian efforts but may not have enough
research and development devoted to them. By cross
referencing the emerging technologies and the most
pronounced needs, the technologies and applications most
likely to grow are identified.
Some general conclusions can be gained so far.
• It should be noted that there are many individual emerging
developments but the convergence of technologies has more
potential impact than any one technology alone. For example,
the convergence of nanotechnology and biotechnology can
transform applications ranging from drinking water to
industrial manufacturing techniques. The demand for
biomanufacturing is sure to increase in direct proportion to the
applications.
• It is clear that developments in one area affect many different
needs. When the resources being applied to both the needs and
the emerging technologies are considered worldwide,
development should accelerate. This depends on
communication and coordination which can be particularly
difficult due to culture, language, and financial barriers.
• Throughout the review of technologies and needs, it was
observed that student projects and charitable institutions have
often bridged the gap between advanced research,
development and humanitarian needs in the most remote areas.
This is observed in individual projects but also in the cross
cultural training characteristic of these projects. The other
place this is observed is in foreign students that return home
with new technology knowledge and apply it to local
opportunities
• The tables developed herein can be used as the basis to
petition for more research and development in several
technologies. Further detailing of the identified areas will be
done in parts 2 and 3.
• Humanitarian needs that show few technological
developments on the horizon are those that need further study.
Are these needs not being addressed or is technology as far
developed as possible for that application ? These areas need
further study.
V. Humanitarian Project Areas Most Likely to be
Accelerated
After reviewing the emerging technologies and associated
research and development funding, that list can be compared
to the needs matrix relative to humanitarian projects. The
result is a list of needs and challenges representing the projects
most likely to be impacted by anticipated developments. These
include, in order of the most likely,
• Air and Ground Transportation Systems - This includes both
mass transit and individual cars, truck, and planes.
• Search and Rescue
• Economical Solar Power - There is much interest currently in
third generation solar cells that can be manufactured by a
modified printing process. Slight improvements in the
manufacturing and materials areas have impending and
significant impact.
• Natural Resource Management - Also a broad topic,
significant work is underway in multiple technologies that can
be applied to optimize use.
• Nanotechnology - Both an emerging technology and an
identified need, some developments have just started to
materialize and developments are advancing due to ubiquitous
support and work underway.
• Mining and Materials - The demand for new and more
material follows from the greater number of developing
nations and the level of development
• Manufacturing Metalworking - This topic follows from both
redeveloping and developing categories as nations are anxious
to improve older plants and manufacturing processes to be
competitive globally and will use any technology to do so.
• Disaster Mitigation and Recovery - Recent disasters have
prompted experts in multiple technologies to apply new
developments to this and closely related (early warning
systems) topics
• Crop and Food Processing - A broad topic that is affected by
many of the anticipated developments
• Lights, Electric, and Energy Systems - While a long standing
traditional need, recent developments, especially LEDs, have
greatly accelerated this and related technologies.
Advancements in the field are being reintroduced into the
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originating countries that are now focused on reducing their
foreign energy dependence.
• Ceramics and composite materials
• Water Purification, Filter Systems, Sanitation
• Early Warning Systems
• Construction – both primary residence and factories
VI. Summary – part 1
A three stage process of determining technological needs,
looking for emerging technologies with humanitarian impact,
and cross referencing the need and anticipated development to
find gaps, has been described. This paper is part of the
validation of those needs by soliciting input and comment on
observed needs of humanitarian projects, both through
publication and presentation. Meanwhile, the research into
emerging technologies and the cross referencing them with the
needs presented here is already underway. Initial results are
identifying areas where research and development can be
leveraged to advance the state of the art in humanitarian
projects. Comments are welcome at gary.conkol@att.net
References
1) Habitat for Humanity. www.habitat.org
2) Engineers Without Borders, http://EWB-USA.org
3) CRDF, http://www.crdf.org
4) Land mine remediation efforts,
http://www.landmines.org/Page.aspx?pid=374
5) Juma, Calestous, Yee-Cheong, Lee, Innovation: applying
knowledge in development, , UN Millennia Project Science,
Technology, and Innovation Task Force Report, 2005,
http://www.unmillenniumproject.org/documents/Science-
complete.pdf
6) Beredjick, N.,OSTI Journal Article #7149205, United Nations
geothermal activities in developing countries
7) US AID Development Challenge Projects
http://www.netsquared.org/usaid/top15
8) Practical Action, http://practicalaction.org
9) National Academy of Engineering, Grand Challenges project,
http://www.engineeringchallenges.org/
10) Nanofronteirs 2007, Woodrow Wilson Center