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Published on October 17, 2024

On September 25, 2024, Dahdaleh research fellow and director of the Humanitarian Water Engineering Lab, Dr. Syed Imran Ali, delivered a seminar on the global crisis of displacement and the fundamental role that water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) plays in controlling infectious diseases in emergencies. He shared experiences from his fieldwork in South Sudan, explaining how displaced communities face the challenges of both too much water and too little, which contributes to outbreaks of infectious waterborne diseases like cholera, dysentery, and diarrhea.

After laying out the current global situation, Dr. Ali discussed the work that the Humanitarian Water Engineering Lab is doing to bridge the humanitarian and academic worlds to solve critical water and health challenges in emergencies. Dr. Ali presented the Safe Optimization Tool, an innovative machine learning-enabled water quality modelling platform that helps humanitarian responders ensure safe drinking water in humanitarian contexts. Dr. Ali stressed that while technical solutions are important, the social, behavioural, and systems changes needed to get people to adopt them in the field remains a challenge, particularly in crisis situations where immediate needs often overshadow longer-term concerns.

Dr. Ali concluded by addressing the ethical challenges of humanitarian work, particularly the tension between neutrality and humanity in many of the geopolitical conflicts in which humanitarian workers must operate. He raised important questions about how engineers and global health workers can confront the socio-political root causes of issues that contribute to ongoing crises while delivering life-saving humanitarian aid. He laid out a vision of humanitarian engineering that seeks to bridge the gap between meeting vulnerable people’s immediate needs and sustainable, structural change to the root causes of their marginalization and suffering, both of which are essential for meaningful impact in the world.

Watch the seminar presentation below:

Connect with Dr. Syed Imran Ali

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