Professional doctorates : applicability to the construction industry in increasing societal resilience to disasters

With the increase in occurrence of high impact disasters, the role of Higher Education Institutes (HEIs) in enhancing the disaster related knowledge and skills of construction professionals is highly recognised. HEIs are expected to contribute to both theory and practice in the development of societal resilience to disasters through the development of curricular and modules to update the knowledge and skills that employees have obtained in the past. Doctoral education is identified as one of the methods in upgrading the knowledge of the construction professionals in this regard. Due to the shortcomings of the traditional doctoral programmes in addressing the needs of the industry and professionals, professional doctorates have become increasingly recognised. As such professional doctoral programmes have been considered as more appropriate in developing knowledge and skills of the construction professionals. Accordingly, a EU funded project, CADRE, aims to develop and test an innovative professional doctoral programme that integrates professional and academic knowledge in the construction industry to develop societal resilience to disasters. As part of this project, the paper aims to analyse the applicability of professional doctorates to the construction industry in developing societal resilience. Based on an extensive review of literature, paper introduces the concept of professional doctoral programmes and its applicability to the construction industry in developing societal resilience.