Disaster Risk and Resilience PGCert

Course overview

Our goal is to advance your skills in evaluating risks, vulnerabilities and capacity in complex socio-economic and political situations. Sector-appropriate module content and assignments provide you with opportunities to evaluate current policy and practice and make recommendations for improvement in humanitarian response, community participatory approaches, accountability and organisational change.

• There will be opportunities to take part in simulated disaster response scenarios in our immersive Simulation Centre⁴.
• Upon successful completion of the course, you should understand the concepts, theories, policy and practice within the areas of risk, humanitarian practice, development, disaster risk reduction, and climate change adaptation so that you are better able to evaluate the activities of NGOs, government organisations, multilateral agencies and institutions and drive necessary transformation.

Why you should study this course

• Coventry University was the first UK university to establish courses in disaster management and emergency planning over 20 years ago (Hulse & Moseley 1998) and is still a leading provider of Higher Education courses and Consultancy services in emergency and disaster management capabilities. We have more than 25 years of alumni who sit in senior positions in organisational resilience across the world.
• Upon successful completion of the course, you should have an understanding of concepts, theories policy and practice within the areas of risk, humanitarian practice, development, disaster risk reduction, and climate change adaptation so that you are better able to evaluate the activities of NGOs, government organisations, multilateral agencies and institutions.
• There is dedicated support available for those who are new to Higher Education, or returning after a long break, with the Centre for Academic Writing’s programme of online and in person tutorials available to all students.

Careers and opportunities

On successful completion of this course, you will have knowledge of:

• Risk, its components and influencing factors, approaches to assessment, and prioritisation and organisational role in planning, managing and recovering from humanitarian crises and disasters.
• Policy and approaches for mitigating, preparing for, managing and recovering from crises, conflict and disasters for responding agencies, organisations and affected communities.
• Approaches to assessing complexity and interaction and developing, monitoring and evaluating resilience in processes, systems, organisations and communities at risk from known and emergent threats in a sustainable way.
• Stakeholder analysis and multi-stakeholder engagement, communication, co-operation and governance in all aspects of policy and strategy development, implementation and management, at all scales in disaster contexts.
• Challenges and approaches for information management, evaluating uncertainty, ambiguity and complexity in knowledge, appropriate and defensible decisions for managing complex disaster situations.
• Issues and challenges at the forefront of research and practice in disasters and resilience.