It is now well recognized that Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change and sea level rise. Natural disasters exert an enormous toll on development. The linkage between development and disaster risk are not difficult to visualize. Any development activity has the potential to either increase or reduces disaster risk. When a school or a health center is destroyed in an earthquake, we have to remember that this same school or health center was once a development project, whether funded from national budgets or external development assistance. The destruction of infrastructure and the erosion of livelihoods are direct outcomes of disasters. Disaster losses interact with and can also aggravate other financial, political, health and environmental shocks. Such disasters losses may setback social investments aiming to ameliorate poverty and hunger, provide access to education, health services, safe housing, drinking water, and sanitation, or to protect the environment as well as the economic investments that provide employment and income. Only if civil engineers on all educational levels can cope with the above challenges, sustainable development can be reached eventually. A comprehensive curriculum and course development combined with “training the trainers” are the first and most important steps in this direction. The proposed Department of Disaster & Environmental Engineering which is one of the main tasks in the curriculum development has to make adaptation so as to become fully prepared for such challenges by improving the quality of civil engineers especially in disaster and environmental issues to the levels comparable with their counterparts in developed countries, keeping in mind the local adaptations. Furthermore, our civil engineers must be capable of seeking knowledge, researching and developing their own technologies by themselves in order to be able to become competitive both domestically and abroad. In response to such needs, the master’s program is created with an emphasis on three main points as follows: 1. A program which is compatible with international standards and consistent with the environment and requirements in Bangladesh. 2. A program which lays emphasis on a broad transfer of technologies yet imparting specialization in the main group of sciences; possible for the practical implementation of the Basic Civil Engineering Science for national development both in the governmental and private sectors. 3. A program which focuses on the R&D of Civil Engineering Technologies for the purpose of generating individual knowledge to enable further study in doctorate too. This program will cover the fundamental theories and the subjects which are significant to the practice of specialized Civil Engineering work no matter in the Construction Management and Quality Control, Earthquake Engineering, Flood Control Engineering, Wind Engineering, Advanced Numerical Modeling, Advanced Mechanics, Challenges in Disaster and Environmental Engineering, Waste Reduction & Control, Human Water Resources and Natural Preservation & Human Nature Interaction.
