Urban & Regional Planning > Academic Programs > Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance
Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance
The Department of Urban and Regional Planning's Program on Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance grows out of our commitment to a multidisciplinary approach to planning education which recognizes the important contributions to planning that can be made by the social and natural sciences and by the architectural, public health, social work, and civil engineering professions and emphasizes extensive community involvement.
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DMHA courses
PLAN 670 Interdisciplinary Seminar in Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance (3)
A comprehensive seminar and overview of the field. Learning objectives include developing a common language for cross-disciplinary interchange and collaboration in this integrative field. Coverage includes distinguishing and comparing natural hazard disasters and human-induced disasters. Understanding the disaster cycle concept; integrating response, recovery, mitigation, disaster resilient development, and preparedness. Developing an understanding of the diversity of participants and stakeholders in the hazards and disaster community. Finding the appropriate scale; local, national, regional, global. Formatted as a guest lecture seminar, the course is a primary vehicle for focusing and maintaining faculty interest and involvement in the program.
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PLAN 671 Disaster Management: Understanding the Nature of Hazards (3)
An overview of the science of hazards, including hazard types, the impacts of hazards, observing, monitoring and forecasting hazard events, mitigation and response, risk and vulnerability assessment. Addressing the linkages required from basic scientific knowledge about hazards through to applied technologies for mitigation, to public information, early warning and preparedness and the public administration of emergency management.
PLAN 672 Humanitarian Assistance: Principles, Practices and Politics (3)
A multidisciplinary look at how the world responds to disaster, crisis and deprivation. The course provides graduate students an opportunity to understand both the basic working structure of humanitarian assistance programs and the theoretical basis for contemporary practice. The major component functions of humanitarian assistance: health and medical services; water supply and sanitation; nutrition and food security; shelter, settlement and infrastructure. How humanitarian work is funded,by who, and why; accountability- or the lack thereof; emergent professionalism and the problem of standards, management issues in aid administration.
PLAN 673 Information Systems for Disaster Management and Humanitarian Assistance (3)
Remote sensing technologies allow for the acquisition of useful observations of hazard phenomena, thereby facilitating the development of monitoring and early warning systems. GIS benefits all aspects of the emergency management cycle from planning, mitigation and preparedness through response and recovery by integrating complex data in a geographic framework that produces actionable information. A basic familiarity with spatial data methods is increasingly critical to informed participation in DMHA decision-making roles. The course will also introduce satellite communications and other information and communications technologies used in disaster management.
The Asia Pacific Initiative
A collaboration between ten education and research institutions in the Asia Pacific region. Graduate students and working professionals interested in disaster management and humanitarian assistance issues have the opportunity to learn from a diverse faculty from throughout the region as well as distinguished guest lecturers from regional and international organizations.
For more information about the API/DMHA collaboration, click here.
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