disaster management course

disaster management course

Enhancing Disaster Management Education: A Comprehensive Course Framework

1. Introduction to Disaster Management

Disaster management refers to programs, strategies, policies, and initiatives aligned with the goal to maintain or re-establish livability in affected areas following a significant natural or man-made event. The history of natural and man-made events, followed by public responses, begins at the dawn of civilization and continues through centuries. Disaster management has seen discrete documented development since the middle of the 20th century, with relevant professional magazines, associations, policies, and programs. Also, large disasters contribute to the constant reshaping of research areas, policies, programs, initiatives, and frameworks. Among the most significant contributions to disaster management education and research stand various areas of practical knowledge such as risk analysis, emergency management, and response, among others. At the societal level, disaster-related policies aim to control and manage the various impacts caused by natural and man-made catastrophic events. At the individual level, relevant professional skills are critical to effective activity among disaster, risk, and policy stakeholders.

2. Key Concepts and Theories in Disaster Management

When developing a curriculum for a specific course, it is crucial to identify, understand, and address the needs of the target group. This includes a realistic understanding of what can be expected from a course that is to develop DM knowledge, skills, and attitudes. This is a matter of utilizing theories of change to justify the structure and behavior of the intended change process. Focus will thus be on curriculum planning and development in general, developmental insights from disaster psychology, and adult learning theories and their implications for teaching practices. Alongside, the educational challenge is well evaluated against reference frameworks and benchmark documents. High-level disaster management (DM) is knowledge-driven. Knowledge development and management, thus, depend on continuous knowledge dissemination, generation, and maintenance. Quality education is an essential element of such knowledge development and management, fostering knowledge and skills at all levels and test fields and hence reaching and empowering the broadly dispersed DM community. Besides basic education, targeting the general public as well as introducing DM as a career choice, advanced educational programs are required to support a growing knowledge-based approach to meet national and international DM objectives.

3. Practical Skills and Tools for Disaster Preparedness and Response

There is an abundance of consensus among response practitioners that the thoughtful and complete use of the incident command system is what makes response to a situation not just playing by ear. Through exercises involving the game of Improv, situational-role playing under haphazard conditions (time, hazardous materials suits) or conducting a computer-assisted management simulation game (Columbian Exchange), students are able to gain experience in thinking about situations on the fly, under developing conditions, or using simulated data.

Many models, protocols, and guidelines currently exist for many of the rapid-onset and technological disasters, including radiological, biological, and chemical accidents/embedded incidents. Integrating these into course instruction would provide any individual at any organizational level with information on how to rapidly assemble, train, and deploy teams required to respond to such events. Furthermore, one can incorporate course activities that enable learners to quickly develop and execute an organizational structure and assembly plan for dealing with a rapid-onset disaster event.

4. Case Studies and Best Practices in Disaster Management

The National Incident Management System framework was used to design a day-long seminar for undergraduates to practice as a member of an Emergency Operations Center. In the public administration course, principles and practices followed by various officials/officers are benchmarked against industry standard maturity model to improve the status of preparedness in the context of government response. Political Science & Geography students have compared governance dysfunction, whereas earth science students have a task to measure the costs of impacts and resilience of human and natural environments in case of making investments in risk reduction ambiguous or inefficient. Although designing a proper curriculum for CERT course is a daunting task, to incorporate organizational behavior theory as taught to management students, this provides a base case studies and best practices in disaster management 327 for study of disaster management for a potential elective course in the anticipated future.

The previous chapter gives a view of the educational framework for the disaster management course. This chapter gives an account of several case studies that were performed at the university level and in the community in detail to further justify the inclusion of various subjects in the course outline. Some interesting practices that are being followed by organizations, which could be included in the curriculum to give a hands-on exposure to the students, are also detailed in this chapter. Among the stakeholders in the practice of disaster management, government organizations providing public services in a community have a great responsibility to perform during emergencies. Therefore, coping mechanisms adopted by such organizations need to be studied in detail to understand the concepts that are used to develop disaster plans and protocols. This chapter outlines some of the best practices followed by various government organizations that could be imbibed in the teaching and exercises so that proactive measures would be taken up by students when working in such organizations.

5. Innovations and Future Trends in Disaster Management Education

Disaster management education is becoming popular with the realization that effective management can lead to reducing the cost of disasters. There are a number of curricular frameworks for disaster management education and various universities offer programs in this important field. Efforts are now directed at enhancing the effectiveness of the training programs, aimed at ensuring that the graduates of such programs are able to effectively formalize the disaster management process. In this chapter, the authors identify the most innovative advances and striving trends which characterize future disaster management education.

This chapter identifies the most innovative developments and emerging trends relevant to disaster management education and training. Although, for the most part, they have not yet been adopted across the board by all educational institutions, significant progress has been made in some areas. The list of innovations and trends includes the following: (a) technological competence; (b) education that is grounded in creativity and innovation; (c) inculcating entrepreneurial spirit at management level; (d) embracing interoperative skills; (e) mastering geopolitical intelligence; (f) mainstreaming cross-disciplinary approach; (g) harnessing problem-based learning pedagogy; (h) exposure to reality of international environment; (i) collaboration with industry; and (j) accreditation of programs by competent institution.