Disaster Risk Management Course Quiz

Course Information

• Course: IEM 100
• Course Name: Introduction to IEM
• Semester: Spring 2025
• Instructor: Dr. Kyoo-Man Ha
• Days: Thursday
• Time: 11:00-13:30

IEM100 Syllabus

• Attendance:
  • Sign in twice (within the first 5 minutes of the class and at the end of the class).
  • Sign only for yourself (signing for someone else will result in disciplinary action).
  • Leaving the classroom for more than 10 minutes will mark you absent.
• Office Hours: Thursday 09:00 – 10:30 via Microsoft Teams
  • Contact instructor for concerns.
• Communication Protocol :
  • Do not call faculty on their personal phone number.
  • Do not call faculty after working hours or during the weekend.
  • Syllabus is available on Moodle.

Course Objectives

• CLO1: Summarize the concept of Integrated Emergency Management (IEM) and its application within a multi-stakeholder environment.
• CLO2: Compare the IEM cycles, in particular: Prevention and Protection, Preparedness, Response, and Recovery.
• CLO3: Integrate the application of the UAE IEM legislation and standards as a platform for dealing with future risks.
• CLO4: Support the IEM concept with key principles of effective emergency management.

Week 1: History of Disasters

• Learning objectives:
  • Learn the fundamental theories of disasters.
  • Differentiate between the classifications of incidents.
  • Know the emerging types of disasters (cascading, compound, and lingering).

Assessments

• Assessment 1 (Quiz): 20%, Week 4 (multiple choice, true-false, etc)
• Assessment 2 (Midterm Exam): 30%, Week 7 (short essays, multiple choice, true-false)
• Assessment 3 (Report): 20%, Week 12 (500 words)
• Assessment 4 (Final Exam): 30%, Week 16 (short essays, multiple choice, true-false)

How to Get an A

• Study hard.
• Do not miss classes or review sessions.
• Submit the written report on time.
• Do not plagiarize or hire ghostwriters.
• Ask for clarification during class, through email, or during faculty hours (Thursdays 14:00-16:30).
• Carefully follow exam and assignment instructions.
• Deduction for Late Submissions: 10% per day.

Structure of Weekly Meetings

• Review of previous lecture
• New lecture
• Group activity
• Reporting
• Recitation
• Meeting is structured in three blocks. The sequence of blocks can be flexible.

Video: Skyscraper fire in Changsha City

• September 16, 2022: major fire broke out in a Changsha skyscraper (population: 10 million).
• 42-story China Telecom building, completed in 2000, was the tallest building in Changsha at 218 meters.
• 280 firefighters responded.
• Number of fatalities unknown.

How can Emergency Management save hundreds of people from a burning building?

• Components of risk
• Phases of the disaster risk management cycle
• Principles of Emergency Management

Deadliest Disasters Worldwide

• Provides a table of significant historical disasters outlining location, estimated death toll, and event.
• Includes data on disasters from the years 1931-1975 and from 2011-2023.

Discussion

• What was the worst disaster in the history of the UAE?

4 Fundamental Theories of Disasters

• Acts of God / Acts of Fate (Destiny)
• Acts of Nature
• Joint effects of nature and society
• Social constructions

Acts of God / Acts of Fate (Destiny)

• Events outside of human control (floods, earthquakes)
• Events for which no party can be held accountable (hurricanes).
• Considered predetermined and beyond victims' control.
• Viewed as cosmic or divine retribution.

Fatalism

• Attitude of resignation in the face of inevitable future events.
• View that humans are powerless to change destiny.

Force Majeure

• French term for "greater force".
• Frees parties from liability when extraordinary events prevent fulfilling obligations (war, strike, etc.).

Acts of nature

• Increased scientific knowledge led to substitution of natural explanations.
• Floods are an example of a natural event caused by precipitation exceeding soil absorption capacity, causing excess water to spill over riverbanks, flooding buildings.

Man against nature

• Use of seawalls, dams, levees to tame nature
• 9.7 meter high seawall in Ishinomaki, Japan as an example.

Joint effects of nature and society

• Disasters arise from the interaction of hazardous physical events and physically vulnerable human systems.
• If either of these are not present, disaster does not occur.
• Collapse of cultural protections creates disaster.

Social constructions

• Emergent from the interaction of hazardous physical events and vulnerable human systems.

Example from the Philippines

• Lack of opportunity and prejudice leading to socioeconomic disadvantaged communities.
• These communities are often located in disaster prone areas

Disaster

• A serious disruption to community or societal functioning due to hazardous events impacting exposure, vulnerability, and capacity, leading to losses.

Emergency

• Sometimes used interchangeably with disaster, but refers to hazardous events that do not result in serious community disruption.

Disaster Risk

• Potential loss of life, injury or property damage in a specific time period probabilistically determined by hazard, exposure, vulnerability, and capacity.

Hazard

• A process, phenomenon, or human activity that may cause loss of life, injury, health impacts, property damage, social disruption, or environmental degradation.
• Different types and numbers of hazards classified by area.

Biological hazards

• Hazards of organic origin or conveyed by vectors; include disease-causing microorganisms; toxins, and bioactive substances
• include bacteria, viruses, parasites and venomous wildlife, poisonous plants, disease-carrying insects.

Hydrometeorological hazards

• Hazards from Earth's atmosphere interacting with land, oceans and the resulting water distribution.
• Observed, monitored, and predicted by national meteorological and hydrological services.

Different Types of storms

• Hurricanes
• Cyclones
• Typhoons.
• Maps of typical path formation outlined.

Tech Hazards

• Failures of existing and emerging technologies
• Affect transportation systems (land, sea, air) and related infrastructure
• Includes accidents at nuclear power plants; ICT-related or cyber hazards.

Geo-hazards

• Hazards with geological origins.
• Seismic (earthquakes), volcanogenic, shallow.

Chemical Hazards

• Immediate (acute) and chronic effects from long-term exposures.
• Damage to nervous and immune systems, impaired reproductive function, cancer, organ-specific damage.

Environmental Hazards

• Caused by environmental degradation or physical/chemical pollution (air, water or soil).

Extraterrestrial Hazards

• Hazards from outside Earth (meteorites or solar flares).
• Solar flares can disrupt electronics/power transmission.
• Asteroid impacts can cause significant local/global damage.

Societal Hazards

• Results entirely or predominantly from human activities and decisions.
• Examples: conflict, post-conflict situations, violence, stampede, financial crises

Exposure

• Describes the presence of people, infrastructure, housing, production capacities, or other human assets within or located in a hazard prone area.
• Number/types of human assets in an area
• Measured to estimate quantitative risks associated with that hazard.

Vulnerability

• The physical, social, economic and environmental factors and processes that can increase an individual/community/asset/system impact from hazards.
• Including the impact of disasters on women/children/persons with disabilities.
• Related to migration and displacement

Capacity

• Combination of the strengths, attributes and resources within an organization/community/society to manage and reduce disaster risks and strengthen resilience.
• Includes infrastructure, institutions, human knowledge, skills, and collective attributes like social relationships, leadership and management systems

Additional Study Information

• Group Activity: Ranking disaster events and providing explanations.
• Review Questions: (Detailed answers to 10 review questions. Cover various topics of disasters and risk reduction. Including specifics on disaster types, classification, and related concepts