TRANSCEND sets out project aims and objectives
TRANSCEND Project partners held a successful kick-off meeting in December 2019 at Sri Lanka’s Cinnamon Bey Hotel to confirm the aims and objectives which will investigate the socio-technical systems required for enabling a transition towards a more risk-sensitive and transformative urban development approach in Sri Lanka, Pakistan and Malaysia.
TRANSCEND which stands for Technology Enhanced Stakeholder Collaboration for Supporting Risk-Sensitive Sustainable Urban Development, is funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) and includes international partners from the University of Salford, the University of Wolverhampton, University of York (UK), University of Moratuwa (Sri Lanka), University of Peshawar (Pakistan), Universiti Tun Hussein Onn Malaysia and Universiti Teknologi Malaysia.
The project promotes a participatory approach which supports the transparent and democratic involvement of all the stakeholders in implementing risk-sensitive urban design which is equitable. The stakeholders considered in the project include local authorities, disaster management authorities, developers, vulnerable communities, and humanitarian organisations. The project aims to develop methods and tools to allow these stakeholders to visualize and debate different development scenarios and choose solutions which are equitable as well as resilient to climate change.
The two-day event which took place on 21st & 22nd December 2019 was organised by the University of Salford THINKlab. The first day included a welcome address and presentation about the project aims and vision by Principal Investigator and THINKlab Director, Prof. Terrence Fernando. This was followed by an introduction of all the Co-Investigators of the TRANSCEND project.
The second day combined presentations and key addresses from Mr Kishan Sugathapala of Sri Lanka’s National Building Research Organisation who discussed ‘Resettlement and Capacity Building,’ Dr. Hans Schaffers from Adventure Research Netherlands who introduced ‘Living Labs as a methodology’, and Prof. Marie-Christine Therrien from Montreal’s École Nationale d’administration publique and Cité-ID LivingLab who contextualized ‘Adaptive Governance.’
The TRANSCEND Project builds on the pioneering research which the MOBILISE Project is currently working on. Since 2018, the MOBILISE project team have been working with multiple partners to bring digital innovation to enhance multi-agency collaboration for their disaster risk reduction and response strategies. It is funded by the Global Challenges Research Fund (GCRF) and the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and focuses on communities in Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Pakistan; three low to middle-income countries who are regularly affected by natural disasters such as flooding, landslides and earthquakes.
THINKlab Director Prof. Terrence Fernando said: “The TRANSCEND Project has given a new lease of life to our MOBILISE project to take our research to the next level. In this project, we hope to use the technical platform that we developed during the MOBILISE project to make organizational transformation so that various government organisations and communities can come together to implement urban development project which is equitable and risk-sensitive. We have a strong interdisciplinary academic team, world-leading scientific advisory committee and influential local stakeholder groups to ensure the TRANSCEND project can deliver valuable outputs and outcome. I am honoured to have the opportunity to work with this world-leading team.”
Read the full kick-off meeting report
Read more about TRANSCEND
Read more about MOBILISE
