GEOG305-17S1 (C) Semester One 2017

Environmental Hazards, Risk and Resilience

30 points

Details:
Start Date: Monday, 20 February 2017
End Date: Sunday, 25 June 2017
Withdrawal Dates
Last Day to withdraw from this course:
  • Without financial penalty (full fee refund): Friday, 3 March 2017
  • Without academic penalty (including no fee refund): Friday, 19 May 2017

Description

The course provides an understanding of hazards, risk and resilience. It also aims to develop some of the skills necessary for disaster management (e.g. the ability to collaborate, direct a project with limited supervision, use simulations). Topics dealt with include the character of specific hazard types (e.g. floods, drought, severe storms, avalanches, mass movement, wildfires, coastal erosion and tsunamis); responses to hazards from the local to the global scale; and the social and community dimensions of hazards, risk and resilience. Examples will be drawn from New Zealand and overseas.

The aim of the course is to investigate the nature and management of environmental hazards. In 2017, the focus will be on rapid and ‘short-lived’ environmental hazards which arise from the interaction of human populations with ‘extreme’ events, primarily hazards of hydrological, geomorphological and climatological origin. Human aspects of hazards, risks and disaster management are investigated during the second part of the course.

Learning Outcomes

  • By the end of the course you should be able to:
  • Understand the physical dimensions of and human responses to a number of environmental hazards;
  • Use GIS and remote sensing tools to analyse environmental hazards;
  • Analyse the characteristics and controls of selected extreme environmental hazards;
  • Understand the social and community dimensions of a selection of environmental hazards and disasters.

Prerequisites

30 points of 200 level geography, or
in special cases with approval of the Head of Department.