Book Details

1: What is Risk?
• Key concepts in risk: hazard, vulnerability, climate change mitigation and adaptation.
• Why is disaster risk important?
• Disaster risk equations.
• Exploring Disaster Data.
• Case study: Hypothesis testing that natural hazards are increasing in frequency, severity and impact due to climate change in the Horn of Africa.

2: Global Trends
• Global trends in development.
• Global trends in disasters.
• Global trends in human displacement.
• Modern approaches to quantitative data analysis.
• Case study: Climate-change driven migration in Bangladesh.

3: Risk Frameworks and Mechanisms
• International frameworks and understand how they are complied with.
• Paris Agreement, UNFCC, IPCC, Sendai Framework, UN SDGs.
• How climate action and risk reduction are implemented at international, national and municipal levels.
• Global risk governance.
• Loss and damage to climate change.
• Disaster management and crisis response planning,
• Case study: Contrasting UK and Nepal disaster risk reduction frameworks.

4: Dynamic Earth
• Earth as a planet in the solar system.
• Plate tectonics and volcanism.
• Evolution of the Earth’s surface.
• Ocean-atmosphere-cryosphere system.
• Oceans: ENSO, IOD, Meridional Atlantic overturning
• Evolution of the atmosphere
• Case study: Coupling of the dynamics of the solid and fluid Earth in the Himalayas: implications for South and East Asian water resources.
• Case study: Seasonal yellow dust storms across China.

5: Earth’s Climate
• History of climate science
• How does the Earth's climate system work?
• Models of Earth's climate and complex interactions between physical processes.
• Global warming.
• Sea Level Rise.
• Foundations of climate modelling.
• Applications of big data and machine learning.
• Case study: Bengal Delta using Earth Observation data.
• Case study: Melting sea ice and transport of pollutants in the Arctic Ocean.

6: Climate Change: Threat Multiplier
• How climate change impacts exacerbate humanitarian need in different contexts.
• Key "threat multipliers" in climate-change-vulnerable areas.
• What makes people vulnerable?
• Climate change and health.
• Participatory research methods.
• Case study: Afghanistan.
• Case study: Pacific small island developing states.

8: Hurricanes and Cyclones
• Hurricane hazard and related storm surge.
• Hurricanes and climate change.
• Qualitative analysis of local expert interviews.
• Vulnerability in context.
• Case study: Dominica, Caribbean.

9: Flooding
• Understand key concepts and drivers of flooding.
• Describe how flooding and forced displacement are trending and how these linked concepts.
• Tools and datasets that analyze floods and human movement in humanitarian contexts.
• Case study: Contrasting the Lynmouth flash flood of 1952 and Rhine floods of 2021.
• Case study: Indus River.

10: Heat and Cold Waves
• Why do people call heat waves "the silent killer"?
• Human thermal comfort under heat waves.
• Urban heat islands.
• Heat waves and wildfires.
• Uncertainty in future temperature extremes.
• Case study: Chinese megacity.
• Case study: Polar vortex across northern Europe.

10: Drought and Food Security
• Understanding drought as a natural and anthropomorphic hazard.
• Understanding drought vulnerability.
• Analysis of drought and climate change.
• Use of drought tools and datasets.
• Case Study: Australia.

12: Geological Hazards
• Mechanics of earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, landslides, lahars and tsunami.
• Why can't we seem ever to predict earthquakes?
• When things go wrong: The Haiti earthquake of 2010.
• Case study: Contrasting interplate earthquakes in California versus intraplate earthquakes in China.
• Case study: Eruption of Mt St Helens, USA.

13: Probabilistic Hazard Assessment
• How can statistics help us prepare for natural hazards?
• Statistical distributions for natural hazards events.
• Forecasting and uncertainty.
• Hazard maps.
• Infrastructure and building codes.
• Case study: 2023 Turkey earthquake.

14: Multi-Hazard Risk Assessment
• What are the risks from multiple natural hazards?
• What is our perception of risk from natural hazards?
• Risk Assessment Framework: Analytic Hierarchy Process.
• Feedbacks, multi-hazard and cascading contexts.
• Early warning systems.
• Case study: Rohingya refugee camps.

15: Resilience
• What is resilience?
• Risk communication.
• Engineered resilience versus social resilience.
• Financial risk transfer mechanisms.
• Case study: Tohoku tsunami and Fukushima crisis, 2011.
• Case study: Microfinance initiatives in sub-Saharan Africa,

16: Transitions
• How do environmental transitions drive social transitions?
• Gender responsive resilience.
• Impacts on culture and heritage.
• Disasters, climate change, extreme events, and biodiversity and habitat loss.
• Future cities.
• Managing and communication of major environmental transitions
• Case study: Somerset Levels, UK.

Appendix 1: Glossary of Terms and Definitions
Appendix 2: Geographical Information Systems
Appendix 3: Analytical Hierarchy Process
Appendix 4: Quantitative Methods
Appendix 5: Qualitative Methods