Courses on Humanitarian Engineering
Humanitarian Engineering Courses
These Courses are Based on the Free Downloadable Book:
ECE 5050 Humanitarian Engineering
Definition: Humanitarian engineering is the creation of technologies that help people.
Course Description: Poverty, underdevelopment, sustainability, culture, social justice, and development strategies. Engineering for community development. Analytical methods.
Offering: Annually, each Spring semester; 3 credit hours.
Prerequisites: ENGR 1182 or 1282 or graduate standing or permission of instructor.
Counting it toward your engineering degree: Undergraduates will have to ask their home Department if they will accept this course as a technical elective (quite a few departments do already), an independent study, or as the first course in a capstone design course sequence. Graduate curricula are generally flexible, and this course number is high enough so that this course will most certainly count toward your graduate degree. This course is required for the humanitarian engineering minor.
Instructor: Prof. Kevin M. Passino, 416 Dreese Laboratory, College of Engineering. Questions?
Office Hours/Discussion Time: I do not set office hours. If I did, likely they would not fit your schedule. I have an open-door policy; stop by any time. However, to avoid the problem of me not always being in my office I encourage you to set up an appointment either as an individual or as a group via email.
Service Projects?: No actual humanitarianism (e.g., service to people who are poor), local or international, is required for this course. This course prepares you to be a professional humanitarian engineer for local or international service by studying the principles. For local/international service project opportunities, and other relevant curricular and research activities, the student organization ECOS.
This course will run Sp22 (and afterwards) under the number "ECE 5050", and will be the same as the earlier offerings when the course was labeled "ENGR 5050."
This course is open to the public via ScarletCanvas:
ECE 5550 Feedback Control Engineering for Social Justice
ECE 5550 Feedback Control Engineering for Social Justice
(Previously, "Computational Humanitarianism")
Description: Models of individual and group poverty and underdevelopment; computational social justice; assessing social impact of technology; sensitivity analysis for technology prioritization and design; feedback control for computer automation of helping to meet social justice objectives. Feedback control for organizational diversity, optimal diverse team formation and functioning.
Offering: Offered Spring of odd-numbered years.
Prerequisites: Enrollment in the College of Engineering, undergraduates with junior or senior status, graduate students, or permission of instructor. ECE 5050 Humanitarian Engineering, or ECE 5570 Antiracist Technology, are not prerequisites. Any engineer can take the course (programming/statistics tutorials will be given in class).
Instructor: Prof. Kevin M. Passino, 416 Dreese Laboratory, College of Engineering, The Ohio State University. Questions?
ECE 5550 Feedback Control Engineering for Social Justice
Instructor: Prof Kevin Passino, passino.1@osu.edu
Description relative to other courses: A more in-depth study of the technical components of ECE 5050 and ECE 5570; however, the necessary material from those courses will be covered so those courses do not have to be taken before this one (of course, having taken those two courses before this one makes good sense).
Credits: 3
Concentration: This course qualifies for use in the "Humans and Justice" concentration (domain) in ECE.
Office Hours: I do not set office hours. If I did, likely they would not fit your schedule. I have an open-door policy; stop by any time. However, to avoid the problem of me not always being available, I encourage you to set up an appointment either as an individual or as a group via email.
Syllabus topics:
- Financial advisors for low-income people, feedback control design (PID, MPC controllers)
- Environmental systems, feedback control for the management of the commons
- Economic systems, stability of economic growth, poverty traps, sensitivity/optimization analysis
- Political systems, democracy in a community (vote-outcome-revote feedback loop)
- Systems theory of systemic racism, computational studies of interconnected dynamics, an overview
- Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) dynamics in organizations, feedback control hiring policy
- DEI team composition and functioning, applications in engineering school/work teams, engineering (co-)design, and engineering for community development.
- Cooperative management of community technology via nonlinear feedback control
- Cooperative sustainable community development as networked/distributed feedback control
Assignments: Homework problems, take-home midterm project and final project.
Syllabus: ECE 5550 Computational Humanitarianism
Textbook: Humanitarian Engineering: Advancing Technology for Sustainable Development, 3rd Edition (free download):
- There are documents at this site for solving homework problems, and ones referenced in the book bibliography.
- The Matlab/Simulink code for simulations in the book and homework assignments is at this site.
Download Matlab/Simulink: OSU students should download the latest version of Matlab/Simulink by clicking here (earlier versions may not work with the code given at this web site). You will need this for some homework problems, and the use of it will be explained in class via a tutorial.
Assignments:
- Homeworks: Homework assignments will be given regularly.
- Midterm and Final Projects: These projects will be assigned about half way, and near the end of the semster.
Schedule:
Week 1:
- Introduction/overview of class
- Introduction to simulation in Simulink and Matlab
- Introduction to Monte Carlo simulation
Week 2:
- Feedback control for financial advisors, PID control with nonlinearities
- Feedback control for financial advisors, Monte Carlo evaluation
Week 3:
- Add savings and capital, PID and MPC results
- Monte Carlo simulations for this case
- Compare to dynamic programming (DP) and show poverty trap
Week 4:
- Tragedy of the commons, nonlinear model, effects of development and population growth on the tragedy
- Wealth distribution policy, performance in small equal community
- Wealth distribution policy, performance in small equal community
Week 5:
- Wealth distribution policy, performance in an unequal community, alternative wealth distribution polilcies
- Modeling democracy
- Modeling democracy, perfomance in various types of communities
Week 6:
- Environmental justice policy, effects of development and population growth
- Models and analysis of economic growth, poverty traps
- Stability analysis of poverty traps
Week 7:
- Stability analysis of poverty traps
- Technology diffusion model, stability analysis
- Technology diffusion model, stability analysis
Week 8:
- Sensitivity anlaysis of poverty traps, policy formation
- Optimization analysis of poverty traps, policy formulation
- Optimization analysis of poverty traps, policy formulation
Week 9:
- Breaking poverty traps with wealth distribution and democracy
- Breaking poverty traps with wealth distribution and democracy
- Feedback control for an environmental justice policy
Week 10: Spring Break
Week 11:
- Cooperative management of community technology, people vs. automation
- Cooperative management of community technology, people vs. automation
- Feedback control for cooperative management of community technology, alternative strategies
Week 12:
- Modeling a community, wealth
- Modeling a community, health, education, resources
- Modeling a community, health, education, resources
Week 13:
- Community behavior for low and high technology
- Sustainable community development index (SCDI)
- Sustainable community development index (SCDI) properties and alternatives
Week 14:
- Impact of key technologies on SCDI
- Dynamics of democracy, development, and cultural values: data, differential equation models, phase plane analysis, couplings, human development index component effects
- Dynamics of democracy, development, and cultural values: data, differential equation models, phase plane analysis, couplings, human development index component effects
Week 15:
1. Course overview, research directions discussion
Technology for Social Justice (Freshman Seminar)
Overview: "Antipoverty Technology"
- Instructor: Prof. Kevin M Passino, passino.1@osu.edu and 614-312-2472.
- Hours to meet, outside class: There will be no "office hrs" due to the pandemic, but I am happy to schedule an e-meeting (phone, or Zoom). Email me to set up a time.
- This is a freshman seminar course. It is 1 credit hour, and meets one a week.
- This course is a condensed version of ENGR 5050 Humanitarian Engineering.
- For a syllabus, see below.
- This course follows the textbook (free download of 785 page book; only parts covered in this course).
- For more information on other areas of "technology for social justice" (poverty, antiracist technology, and mental health), click here.
Course Goals: (i) Make students aware of the state of poverty and development in the world, (ii) Show students an approach to anti-poverty technology development, and (iii) provide an introduction to two research areas in anti-poverty technology development.
Course Content: The course content includes: (i) an introduction to the state of poverty and development in the world, (ii) an overview ideas from social justice, (iii) a summary of the major approaches to promote development, (iv) an introduction to a participatory development methodology for technology, and (v) a presentation of two current research challenges in the area of the development of anti-poverty technology (financial advisors for low-income persons and cooperative management of community technology).
Weekly Topical Outline:
Class, Topic
- Introduction to poverty (video: “Living on One Dollar” in Guatemala)
- Discussion: What are anti-poverty technologies? Introduction to homelessness (videos from InvisiblePeople.TV). Anti-poverty technologies for the homeless?
- World statistics on poverty and development (UN and World Bank data explorer/visualizer), UN Sustainable Development Goals
- Social justice, UN Universal Declaration on Human Rights discussion
- Development strategies, economics perspectives
- Development strategies, education, health, business perspectives
- The skilled helper, community development
- Participatory community development, video “The Water of Ayolé” (a story about cooperative pump technology development in Africa)
- Community assessment, project selection, fieldwork
- Anti-poverty technologies, examples
- Research Challenge #1: Personal financial advisor, problem formulation (how to help people save, and avoid risk)
- Research Challenge #1: Personal financial advisor, technological solutions
- Research Challenge #2: Cooperative management of community technology, people-solutions and semi-automated solutions (how to automate the collection of money for operation and maintenance of a shared technology)
- Research Challenge #2: Cooperative management of community technology, technological solutions
- The 10 Principles of Humanitarian Engineering
Week 14: Final exam time period, Friday Dec 11, 2pm-3:45pm (as usual, on Zoom). Coverage of 15. above and foundations for taking action. No preparation required.
Homework Assignments, Percent Weighting: See Carmen
Required Textbook:
Kevin M. Passino, Humanitarian Engineering: Advancing Technology for Sustainable Development, Edition 3, Bede Pub., Columbus, OH, 2016. This is available for a free download.
Short Courses
International Conference on Sustainable Development
Alfred Lerner Hall, Columbia University, New York, NY
Post-Conference IEEE Workshop:
Technology and Innovation for the Sustainable Development Goals
Sept. 28, 2018 (day long)
Presenters: Paul Cunningham, Pritpal Singh, Kevin Passino, Shaikh Fattah, Khanjan Mehta
Attendees: About 80
Financial Support: IEEE Humanitarian Activities Committee
Outline:
- Introduction and overview
- Humanitarian/development engineering examples and connection to SDGs
- Participatory development
- Community needs/assets assessment
- Technology services for NGOs
- Human-centered design
- Outcome assessment
- Ethics and unintended consequences
- Related, broad, technology needs
- Examples of technologies for sustainable development (details)
- Design break-out groups (tech for specific communities)
- Reporting from groups
- Wrap-up
Title: Humanitarian Engineering: Engineering for Sustainable Community Development
Location/Financial Support: Universidad de Nariño, Pasto, Colombia; supported by Univ. de Nariño and Fulbright Specialist Scholar program (Colombia) and ICETEX.
Date and Time: June 19, 2017 (4 hours)
Based On: ENGR 5050 course, Spring 2017 and Book, Edition 3
Outline:
Engineering for Sustainable Community Development:
- Skills for Helping People
- Community Development
- Participatory Development
- Teamwork and Project Management
- Community Assessment
- Project Selection
- Humanitarian Technology
- Participatory Technology Development
- Assessment of Outcomes
- Dissemination and Scale-up
- Engineering Fieldwork
Number of attendees, about 80. Simultaneous translation.
Talk, June 20: Humanitarian Engineering: Creating Technologies That Help People (1 hr). Number of attendees was 41. Simultaneous translation.
Title: Humanitarian Engineering: Engineering for Sustainable Community Development
Location/Financial Support: Universidad Autónoma de Occidente, Cali, Colombia; Supported by Univ. Autónoma, Fulbright Specialist Scholar program (Colombia) and ICETEX.
Date and Time: June 15, 2017 (4 hours)
Based On: ENGR 5050 course, Spring 2017 and Book, Edition 3
Outline:
Engineering for Sustainable Community Development:
- Skills for Helping People
- Community Development
- Participatory Development
- Teamwork and Project Management
- Community Assessment
- Project Selection
- Humanitarian Technology
- Participatory Technology Development
- Assessment of Outcomes
- Dissemination and Scale-up
- Engineering Fieldwork
About 20 attendees.
Talk, June 14: Humanitarian Engineering: Creating Technologies That Help People (1hr). Click here for the slides. About 50 attendees, simultaneous translation.
Title: Humanitarian Engineering: Engineering for Sustainable Community Development
Location/Financial Support: Nile University, Cairo, Egypt; also had some support from IEEE Foundation.
Dates: May 19-June 1, 2017
Duration: 11 hrs
Students: 15 students
Based on: Book, 3rd Edition, Sp17 OSU ENGR 5050 course
Additional Talks: There were three additional talks given besides the short course below. These were:
- Humanitarian Engineering: Creating Technologies That Help People (audience: undergraduates, local NGO community; about 50 attendees). A shortened version of this talk was also given at a local company. 1hr long. May 31, 2017.
- Research Challenges in Humanitarian Engineering (audience: faculty and graduate students, about 25 attendees). 1 hr long. May 31, 2017.
Textbook: The course text is: Humanitarian Engineering: Advancing Technology for Sustainable Development, 3rd Edition (click for a free download). Also, download from that site:
- The Matlab/Simulink code for simulations in the book and homework assignments (folder name "HEcode").
- The "Supplementary documents" at this site for solving homework problems, and ones referenced in the book bibliography (folder names HEdocumentsI - HEdocumentsV, five folders).
Syllabus
1. Poverty and Development: World-wide, US, Egypt
2. Sustainability and the Sustainable Development Goals
3. Development Economists Perspectives (Sachs, Easterly, Banerjee and Duflo)
4. Engineering for Sustainable Community Development:
- Skills for Helping People
- Community Development
- Participatory Development
- Teamwork and Project Management
- Community Assessment
- Project Selection
- Humanitarian Technology
- Participatory Technology Development
- Assessment of Outcomes
- Dissemination and Scale-up
- Engineering Fieldwork
Assignments and Grading: Your final grade is determined via your performance on homework assignments, the ones given below (X.Y denotes Chapter X Problem Y).
Homework Due: June 24, 2017.
Chapter 1:
- 1.1 Movie, Living on One Dollar (view if you can get access to it)
- 1.3(a,b) Make the choice of one of your countries, Egypt
- 1.17
Chapter 2:
- 2.1
(link is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XXGF_V8_7M)
Chapter 3:
- 3.7
- 3.11(a,b)
- 3.12
- 3.13
- 3.15
Chapter 4:
- 4.1
- 4.5
- 4.7(a,b)
- 4.14
- 4.16
- 4.20 (the movie was given to 5 students in the class-see one of them to get it)
- 4.27
- 4.34
- 4.43
Title: Humanitarian Feedback Control Engineering
Location/Program/Support: Workshop before the IEEE Multiconference on Systems and Control, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Funded by IEEE Control Systems Society TAB, and IEEE Foundation. About 25 attendees.
Date and Time: Sept. 19, 2016. Duration: 8 hrs., 5.5 hrs lecture time.
Based On: Course Spring 2016, book 2nd Edition
Outline:
- Feedback control for financial advisor, model and analysis of sustainability
- Models and analysis of wealth distribution policy, democracy, and environmental justice
- Economic models and analysis, poverty traps, optimization for allocation, technology diffusion, resource utilization control
- Cooperative management of community technology, models and analysis of technologies for sustainable community development
Title: Humanitarian Engineering Workshop: Paraguay 2016
Location/Program/Support: The following events were a part of the workshop:
- Short course, 6 hrs. by Hugo Gonzalez and Isabel Fernandez, slides to be posted (in Spanish). See below for outline.
- Short course, 3 hrs., 1 hr each, by Mario Aleman (Managua, Nicaragua), Diana Duarte (Bogotá, Colombia), Jorge Finke (Cali, Colombia). See below for talk titles.
- Community assessment and project work: Qom People, Cerrito. Chose to work on a cookstove and kitchen construction for a young family.
- STEM education for underprivileged children in two high schools in Asunción, and one at Cerrito (total of seven 2-hr sessions).
Funded by IEEE Foundation and IEEE Humanitarian Activities Committee. Partners included IEEE Section, Paraguay, IEEE student chapter at Universidad Nacional de Asunción, Fundación Paraguaya, and Benjamin Franklin Science Corner at the US Embassy.
The short course components averaged about 30 attendees per day.
Dates: Aug. 11-22, 2016
Based On: Course, Spring 2016, last part; Chapter 4 of 2nd Edition of book.
Outline: 6-hr portion of short course:
- Helping
- Participation
- Community assessment
- Project selection
- Humanitarian and appropriate technology
- Project examples
Talks by Experts: 3-hr portion of short course:
- Mario Alemán, Section Chair IEEE Nicaragua, "Experiencias del Empoderamiento Comunitario e Interrelaciones con Personas y Organizaciones en Nicaragua a través de la Educación"
- Diana Duarte, ISF Colombia, "Distancia Cero – Ingenieros sin Fronteras, Colombia, Ingenieros Sin Fronteras Colombia: Experiencias en Diseño e Ingeniería Social"
- Jorge Finke, Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Cali Colombia, "Grandes datos, grandes retos"
Title: Humanitarian Feedback Control Engineering
Location/Program/Support: Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia. Course completed in collaboration with Nicanor Quijano. Part of the Summer School program by Ingenieros Sin Fronteras, led by Catalina Ramirez. Financial support provided by ISF, Universidad de los Andes, and the IEEE Foundation. About 20 attendees.
Dates: June 30-July 3, 2015 (17 hours of lectures, plus supervised final project work all day Friday)
Based On: Course, Spring 2015 and Book, Edition 2
Outline:
- Feedback control for financial advisor, model and analysis of sustainability
- Models and analysis of wealth distribution policy, democracy, and environmental justice
- Economic models and analysis, poverty traps, optimization for allocation, technology diffusion, resource utilization control
- Robust multicriteria decision theory/applications, cooperative management of community technology, models and analysis of technologies for sustainable community development
Final project for the course on the IEEE Humanitarian Challenge, Colombia 2015.
Title: Humanitarian Engineering
Location: Universidad de Nariño, Pasto, Colombia, about 50 attendees
Date and Time: Wed., July 30, 2014, 8am-12pm (4 hours)
Based On: Course, Spring 2014 and Book, Edition 1
Outline: (roughly 1 hr per topic)
- Poverty, development, and culture; modeling and simulation of poverty
- Social justice; modeling and analysis of wealth distribution policies and democracy
- Development; modeling and analysis of poverty traps and technology diffusion
- Engineering for community development
Title: Introduction to Humanitarian Engineering
Location: Universidad de los Andes, Bogotá, Colombia, about 35 attendees.
Date and Time: Tues., July 22, 2014, (2 hours)
Based On: Course, Spring 2014 and Book, Edition 1
Outline: (roughly 30 min per topic)
- Poverty and development; modeling and simulation of poverty
- Social justice; modeling and analysis of wealth distribution policies and democracy
- Modeling and analysis of poverty traps and technology diffusion
- Engineering for community development
Title: Humanitarian Engineering
Location: Universidad Pontificia Bolivariana, Medellín, Colombia, about 40 attendees.
Date and Time: Wed., July 16, 2014, 2pm-6pm (4 hours)
Based On: Course, Spring 2014 and Book, Edition 1
Outline: (roughly 1 hr per topic)
- Poverty, development, and culture; modeling and simulation of poverty
- Social justice; modeling and analysis of wealth distribution policies and democracy
- Development; modeling and analysis of poverty traps and technology diffusion
- Engineering for community development
About
Meant to represent various aspects of this course, and to summarize via different educational media, you can consider (found in typical internet locations like YouTube, Spotify, iTunes, etc.):
Where is the love? Black Eyed Peas
We are the world (Africa)
Aloha ke akua, Nahko and Medicine for the People (different video versions)
There is always a song, Michael W. Smith
Heal the world, Michael Jackson
From a distance, Bette Midler
- Lyrics, music, video and combinations are available.
- Voted #1 by students: Where is the love?
IEEE Foundation
Battelle Engineering, Technology, and Human Affairs (BETHA) grants (two)
OSU Engagement Impact Grant
Fulbright Specialist Scholar Program, ICETEX.
Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering at OSU, and the College of Engineering at OSU.
Other funding as indicated for each short course.
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