Disaster Management And Humanitarian Assistance (DMHA)
Course Overview
Disasters occur when abnormal or infrequent hazard events impact on vulnerable communities, causing substantial damage, disruption, casualties, death and other public health impacts, often leaving affected communities unable to function normally without external assistance (1). Natural hazards include floods, drought, cyclones/hurricanes, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, tsunami, and landslides, among others. Human-induced disasters include war, armed conflict, technological and radiological accidents, toxic spills, structural failures, terrorism and bioterrorism. Complex emergencies are situations where more than one causal factor may be involved, and are often compounded by civil disorder and the breakdown of governance and social support structures.
There has been a rapid escalation in the incidence of severe disaster events in recent decades. Total reported global costs have risen 15-fold over the past five decades, while numbers of people affected tripled between the 1970s and 1990s. Rising losses and associated increases in expenditure on post-disaster reconstruction have forced the issues of hazards, risk and disaster management up the policy agendas of affected governments, as well as multilateral and bilateral donors and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Disasters are increasingly recognized for their potential threat to sustainable development, poverty reduction initiatives, the achievement of a number of the Millennium Development Goals, and the health of national economies.
In turn, disaster-related setbacks to sustainable development, especially with respect to governance, social instability and insecurity, are increasingly recognized as having negative impacts on global efforts to address terrorism, transnational crime, failing states and global emerging diseases. In our rapidly globalizing world, cross-cutting issues such those arising from disasters and emergencies require purposeful attention from a variety of disciplinary perspectives.
(1) Many definitions of disaster exist; this description is based on the work of the Provention Consortium, a risk reduction effort supported by the International Federation of the Red Cross. See, Policy Brief, Benson and Twigg, December 2004, www.proventionconsortium.org.
| Course starts: |
25 September 2008 (Hawaii, Samoa) 26 September 2008 (Fiji, Japan, Thailand, Indonesia, India) |
| Duration: | 15 classes (from September 2008 to January 2009) Each class is one and half-hours. One hour of lectures, 30 min Q&A |
| Mode of Delivery: | Live video-conference, supported by online learning |
| Qualitification: | The course is offered for credit at the partner universities. A certificate of completion is provided to all students. |
| Course Coordinators: |
John Robert Egan, University of Hawaii at Manoa |
Participating Sites:
Asian Institute of Technology
Jean-Philippe Thouard
Jayant Routray
Gadjah Mada University
Nizam Nizam
National University of Samoa
Patila Malua-Amosa
United Nations University
Dr. Brendan Barrett
Akhilesh Surjan
University of Hawaii
John Robert Egan
University of the Ryukyus
