Humanitarian Engineering - What does it all mean?

Humanitarian Engineering is a term that has become wide spread in the last 15 years with the growth of organisations such as Engineers Without Borders and educational opportunities and initiatives in the development world. However, the term has different meanings and understandings related to types of humanitarian work undertaken and national approaches. Numerous definitions have been provided including Miller (2008), Muñoz and Skokan (2007), VanderSteen (2008) and White (2011). Hill and Miles (2012) explored student understanding of the term at one institution in the UK and concluded understandings vary and further exploration of the term is required within individual education providers to develop their educational initiatives. In Australia one definition was provided by Engineers Australia in 2011 as part of the Year of Humanitarian Engineering (in Greet 2014) but there has been little discussion or critique of this.