Making tomorrow’s infrastructure sustainable and resilient requires investing in high calibre research and innovation today. Increasingly complex infrastructure systems of the 21st century require capabilities that can combine knowledge from multiple disciplines, harness the promise of emerging technologies, and bring together insights from the local level. The CDRI Fellowship Programme is designed to develop a global pool of practitioners who represent such capabilities.
The aim of the CDRI Fellowship Programme is to promote research and innovation on disaster resilient infrastructure (DRI). It does this by supporting practitioners, academicians, and community leaders, who are working in related fields. The Fellows will have an opportunity to interact and exchange ideas with their peers from across the world. The Fellowship provides financial aid to support a search for solutions to real-world problems related to DRI. Promising solutions emerging from the Programme will be shared widely and may be taken up for implementation in multiple contexts. Upon successful completion, the Fellows will join the global network of CDRI alumni and participate in alumni events.
In a year, CDRI will offer up to 30 Fellowships.
CDRI offers a lump-sum Fellowship amount up to US$ 10,000 or equivalent. This amount is inclusive of all costs of research, travelling for research and review presentations, institute overheads, taxes, duties, etc., and any applicable tax. However, if the research teams are invited by CDRI to make presentations at conferences, seminars, etc., the cost of travel will be borne by CDRI. The honorarium/overhead of the endorsing institute will be up to fifteen percent (15%), and is included in the above amount.
The research projects under the CDRI fellowship should be completed within 12 months from the disbursement of the first instalment of the Fellowship grant. Generally, no extension is granted in the duration of the project, in extraordinary situations, CDRI may consider an extension of project duration for not more than six months. However, there shall be no increase in the Fellowship amount due to extension of the duration of the Fellowship.
The CDRI Fellowship grant will be a lump-sum amount to be paid in two instalments of 50% each. First instalment will be paid after the applicant(s) is selected for the Fellowship. Second instalment will be paid after a satisfactory level of research work in the second progress review.
The CDRI Fellowship does not intend to sponsor course fee of applicants for their Master or PhD degrees. Instead, CDRI Fellowship will provide a one-time grant for research projects being taken up by any individual or group of researchers, including Master and PhD students, on the topics relevant for disaster resilience infrastructure. The CDRI Fellowship will be in addition to any existing scholarship/fellowship/salary/income of the candidate(s). If applicants/research projects are receiving any funding from other organizations which restricts receipt of any additional fellowship, then the applicants must clarify this issue with the concerned organizations.
The decision of CDRI in the matters of Fellowship Programme shall be final.
The CDRI Fellowship Programme supports research focused on urban, rural or regional contexts, whether it is focused on resilience of existing infrastructure or new infrastructure. The research may focus on risks at the level of asset (e.g. construction technology for components of a power transmission network) or risks at the level of an infrastructure system (e.g. innovative ways to identify vulnerable nodes in a power grid).
The CDRI Fellowship Programme supports research on building resilience of infrastructure to disaster risks emanating from both natural (hydro-meteorological and geophysical hazards) and man-made hazards. The proposed research may look at risks from extreme events as well as slow-onset events including those emanating from the emerging effects of climate change.
The CDRI Fellowship Programme supports research related to resilience of physical infrastructure (e.g. power, telecommunication, roads, railways, and airports), social infrastructure (e.g. schools, hospitals amd community infrastructure), as well as ecological infrastructure (e.g. natural waterways, wetlands, mangroves).
Across the sectors mentioned above, the research may focus on any of the following eight thematic areas:
The main emphasis of the research should be to address specific real-world problems and search for implementable solutions in infrastructure sectors. Above-mentioned themes provide few indicative research topics to give an idea of the type of research the Programme may support.
After satisfactory performance in the final meeting, and by the end of 12th month, the project team will submit a project closure report. The project team is expected to acknowledge CDRI in the report and all research publications arising from the research. Research teams will also share an electronic copy of such publications with CDRI, which may be published on its Knowledge Portal. Note: Some journals require special permission and payments for publishing in public domains; such cases will be decided on a case-by-case basis.
CDRI may consider further collaboration with the best performing researchers (Fellows). Also, CDRI may consider to upscale the best research projects. Such decisions will be taken based on the inputs from the Panel of experts reviewing the projects, project closure reports, and other factors considered relevant by CDRI.