ASCENT (Advancing Skill Creation to ENhance Transformation) is a project funded by the European Union that aims to strengthen research and innovation capacity for the development of societal resilience to disasters. The project is designed to support training, skills, leadership development, international collaboration and university-industry partnerships. It will strengthen the ability of higher education to respond to research needs in disaster resilience. It will also empower individuals and organizations with the skills, competencies and credentials needed to continue to pursue research, and to lead research at institutions, aimed at reducing the impact of disasters.
1) Identifying research and innovative capacity needs across partner country HEIs to tackle the development of societal resilience to disasters;
2) Developing research infrastructure to support implementation of the project and provide sustainable capacity development within the partner HEIs;
3) Preparing researchers in the identified Asian countries to undertake advanced, world-class and innovative, multi- and inter-disciplinary research that will contribute to increased societal resilience to disasters;
4) Increasing international cooperation by partners HEIs on research programmes that tackle ways to increase societal resilience to disasters;
5) Exploring, promoting and initiating opportunities for fruitful university / industry partnerships to increase societal resilience to disasters; and
6) Publicising the project progress, successes and outcomes as far as possible, and raising awareness across the field of HE about capacity building for disaster resilience research.
In doing so, the project will increase the research and innovative capacity of partner HEIs to tackle the challenges associated with developing societal resilience to disasters. There will be greater internationalisation across each HEI’s research and innovation activity, including improved intra-regional cooperation and inter regional cooperation. The project will also strengthen the relationship between HEI activity in the region, and the wider social and economic environment. With the emergence of a knowledge economy, investment in knowledge production has become a highly rewarding activity, and hence it has become an important corporate concern. Enhancing research capacity in HEIs is becoming increasingly needed so that they can adequately play their role as incubators of knowledge and ideas. Making HEIs the center for innovation and generation of ideas is critical for development. In ASCENT, we argue that the knowledge divide is deep and our target countries and suffer from a lack of human resources in R&D. They need to improve their capacity to produce knowledge domestically and absorb knowledge produced elsewhere.