Towards Integrating Digital Preparedness into Higher Education

Abstract

Integrating digital disaster preparedness tools into higher education curricula faces persistent challenges in terms of engagement, relevance, and practical skill development. Recent advancements in digital tools offer promising opportunities to address these gaps through more interactive and experiential learning approaches. Integrating these technologies into higher education offers new opportunities to foster disaster preparedness competencies among students, including enhanced risk awareness and improved emergency decision-making. However, embedding such tools into academic curricula requires careful alignment with pedagogical goals, institutional systems, and stakeholder expectations. This paper explores pathways for integrating modern digital preparedness tools within university education. Stakeholder feedback was collected from educators, students, and first responders via a survey, drawing on experiences from an EU-funded project that developed an ecosystem (B-Prepared) including four digital products: virtual reality (VR-prepared), mobile technologies (IM-prepared), a learning management system (RU-prepared), and a knowledge management system (Disastropedia). The results indicate positive attitudes toward embedding preparedness modules into existing courses via LMS integration, informing the design of a proposed user flow that facilitates seamless curricular integration. The paper further discusses key challenges related to knowledge transfer, pedagogical alignment, and institutional infrastructure. These insights contribute to the advancement of effective and sustainable models for digital preparedness education in higher education.