MSc Disaster Management

Developing Policies and Plans: You will be introduced to the importance of sound disaster management plans and frameworks. Internationally, many nations still do not have developed disaster management plans. This unit has been developed over several years and in multiple countries to assist national governments and agencies in addressing this vital issue. The principles of this unit underpin each of the subsequent units.

Management of Communications and Learning: This unit teaches you how to communicate learning in practical and attractive ways, gaining the interest of audiences, drawing upon audience experience and knowledge, winning audience cooperation for more excellent integrated activities, and creating relevant participatory exercises from academic and practical-based literature to help turn lessons identified into lessons learned. In this unit, you can write your disaster management exercise.

Dissertation: An opportunity to study a disaster management topic in-depth, showing your understanding. The dissertation concludes your learning experience, where you will conduct a research project. You'll use appropriate research methodology to collect and analyze data and present your findings. Your dissertation will be 15,000 words, and you'll be taught about research methods.

Management of Man-Made Disasters and Security Threats: This unit focuses on the nature and types of artificial (human-instigated) hazards, including those on land, air, and sea. You will cover issues such as crowd safety and industrial accidents. The unit also investigates disaster management responses to emerging security threats like cyber-attacks and terrorism. Taking a case study approach, you will evaluate the lessons learned from recent reports and complete a strategic-level multi-stakeholder planning and response exercise as part of a group.

Management of Natural Hazards: You will examine the complexities of natural hazards which affect countries all over the globe. This includes natural hazards such as tsunamis, floods, droughts, and earthquakes. You will learn to evaluate the management issues associated with such threats and how these can be applied to central incident management, risk reduction, recovery, and national planning.

Humanitarian Operations and External Assistance: This unit introduces you to challenges when external assistance is offered to another country. You will discuss the differences between humanitarian operations or humanitarian aid and intervention. Then, using a developing set of scenarios, you will engage in simulation exercises as a deployed team offering external assistance to a country with several natural hazards. The unit concludes by then applying those lessons identified to the national home plan.

Management of Wider Stakeholders: In this unit, you will explore the role of wider stakeholders: NGOs, businesses, media, academia, local communities, individuals, and disaster volunteers. As a result, you will develop an understanding of the management issues associated with integrating wider public and private stakeholders into a national disaster management framework, including risk reduction, response, and recovery.

Public Health Preparedness, Resilience, and Response: Throughout this unit, you will examine public health resilience and response strategies in disaster management. Looking at current national and international best practices drawn from a combination of academic and professional practitioner approaches to healthcare resilience; you will learn methods for establishing effective healthcare emergency preparedness, strength, and response systems. In this unit, you will investigate contemporary public health issues like the national and international response to Covid-19.

Foreign Policy Analysis & Crisis Management: This unit focuses on the concepts and theories of foreign policy analysis relevant to disaster management. You will consider the diplomatic dimensions of international disaster and crisis management and evaluate critical issues and challenges shaping the formulation and implementation of foreign policy regarding crises and disasters. In addition, you will explore case studies that include complex emergencies like the War in Yemen and investigate the international dimensions of responses to major disasters like the DeepWater Horizon Oil Spill, the NASA Space Challenger disaster, and Hurricane Katrina.

Disaster Management for Business Professionals (not available for 2023 and 2024 entry): You will gain a detailed appreciation of the concepts, theories, challenges, and practices of the private sector when preparing for, responding to, and recovering from crises and disasters. The unit focuses on how international disaster management contributes to business resilience in theory and practice.