39 courses with the subject EDM, each shown exactly as we captured it from the college's catalog, with every element we hold. Where the wording looks broken, that is our reading of the catalog, not the college's text.
Overview of emergency and disaster management. Topics include major concepts, theory and history, terminology, and the roles, functions, and inter-relationships of key agencies and organizations involved in this field.
This course introduces students to the fundamentals of social sciences and disaster research including research terminology, design, analysis, and presentation of data.
The appropriate use and interpretation of data measurement and statistical methods are vitally important in various professions related to emergency and disaster response, as evidenced by the advancement of data-driven practices. See the use of probability statistics in search and rescue, for example. This course is structured to achieve two main objectives. The first is to illuminate the important concepts in descriptive as well as inferential statistics: measures of central tendency and dispersion, normal distributions, probability theory, hypothesis testing, statistical significance, measures of association, and analysis of variance (ANOVA). The second objective is to explain how to manage and interpret data using SPSS, a statistical software package commonly used in the social sciences. Students will develop an understanding of how various test statistics are calculated and interpreted, and how to apply these statistics in real world events.
An exploration of the social implications of a disaster, including its effects on victims, their families, first responders, the community, businesses, the economy, and special populations.
Introduction to the multiple facets of emergency planning.
Introduction to concepts and principles of risk assessment and vulnerability analysis.
An overview of the response phase of the disaster management cycle, during which resources are marshaled, deployed, and managed.
An exploration of the concepts and principles associated with hazard mitigation and its place in disaster management.
An exploration of the political dynamics of American emergency and disaster management.
Debris and waste management is a crucial component in the emergency management cycle and is an important component in all four phases of disaster response: preparedness, mitigation, response, and recovery. A lack of an adequate debris/waste management process can ultimately delay recovery from a disaster or catastrophe. This course will provide students with an overview of the debris/waste management process for each of the four phases of emergency and disaster management. Other topics that will be included in the course to strengthen students’ understanding of the content include the history of solid waste management in the United States, solid waste management issues from a geographic perspective, and the relationship between municipal solid waste and disaster debris.
This course will analyze the fire service’s role within emergency and disaster operations. This course will review response planning and a fire agency’s response protocol’s integration with other responding agencies. This course further examines senior fire and emergency management officials’ responsibilities associated with co-managing the operational component of a major emergency or disaster.
Geological processes and weather-related events like earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, extreme heat, floods, hurricanes, lightning, tornadoes, tsunamis, droughts, and winter weather all pose risks that may warrant an emergency response. Preventing, preparing, mitigating, and responding to weather-related events are the tasks of emergency and disaster management responders. National weather maps, storm alerts, and accurate forecasting can aid in emergency preparation, yet are rarely as clear-cut as desired. Understanding these complex factors, in addition to how weather can affect the response to emergency deployments for other types of disaster, are important considerations. Weather-related events can also lead to other types of emergency outcomes such as the spread of disease in flood zone areas. Understanding the intersection of geological processes, weather-related events, and emergency preparation and response is the focus of this course.
When disaster strikes, a community can build back better than before or alternatively must adapt to a new normal because of limited resources to recover from disaster. This variation in recovery is the focus of this course. Communities with resources that allow them to anticipate, cope with, respond to, and recover from disasters are often described as being more resilient than communities that cannot. How resource availability can reduce or increase the recovery from disasters is important to understand. Resilient communities have greater access to both tangible and intangible resources, such as physical, political, economic, and social capital. How communities mobilize their resources and demonstrate their resilience, and the factors that determine the effectiveness of their responses, are varied and influenced by social, institutional, environmental, economic, and historic variables. This course will explore the factors that explain variation in recovery and resiliency. Additionally, students will analyze patterns of emergency response in the U.S. as they relate to recovering from disaster.
Since Hurricane Katrina, non-government organizations (NGOs) have played a much more active role in disaster relief and humanitarian aid. This course offers a broad perspective of the role NGOs in the disaster cycle, particularly disaster relief. This course will focus on specific representative areas of NGO activity in the context of disaster, including development, humanitarian assistance, transnational human rights, and transnational NGOs and their consequences, as well as how NGOs fit in the National Response Framework.
This course investigates the role and impact of cyber terrorism, cyber-attacks, and possible countermeasures. International cyber terrorism will focus on what cyber warfare is, who initiates it, and how a nation, corporations, or individuals might prevent, prepare, mitigate, and respond to such attacks. This type of warfare exists in an effort to compromise perceived enemies and secure potential benefits by damaging enemies’ infrastructures and resources, and by gaining control of desired information or technology of the targeted victim. Cyber-attacks are not limited to nations but may target local governments, corporations, and even individuals. This course will also examine security protocols that are recommended for protecting an entity from a cyber-attack and assess the extent to which these protocols are used.
Identification, coordination, and effective utilization of government, private, and not-for profit resources by emergency responders.
Understanding how economic, political and social dynamics interact with disaster events to explain crime and victimization during crisis is the focus of this course. While natural or man-made disasters can cause sudden disruption to communities that often result in helping behaviors, there is growing evidence that people may engage in anti-social or criminal behavior during times of disaster as well. A better understanding of why, when, and where criminal behaviors are likely to surface during the disaster life cycle is needed. This course will examine how the different phases of disaster relate to criminal activity in the disaster context, and then examine how the criminal justice system responds to the different types of crime in the wake of disaster.
Preparation, response, and recovery related to a disastrous event can be very stressful to direct victims as well as first responders. This course will address some of those issues related to personal welfare and suggest what the triggers are and how those issues might be mitigated. Attention will also be given to the families of first responders who are often a very neglected group.
International disasters generate unique concerns as they can overwhelm the capacities of entire nations. This course will explore the political, economic, and social components of international disasters and catastrophes, and how the humanitarian and professional community prepares, mitigates, and responds to such events. This will be highlighted through a diverse set of international disaster case studies and “what if” examples.
This course is designed to critically examine the relationship between social inequality and disaster vulnerability. Special emphasis will be placed on social theories of disaster vulnerability, research examining the experiences of socially marginalized populations during disasters, and strategies for reducing disaster-vulnerable populations which include increased incidences of domestic violence, neglect, fraud, and other crimes.
Examination of economic, legal, organizational, and social infrastructure related to emergency management.
Collective behavior refers to the actions of groups, and people who study collective behavior study things like crowds, crazes, rumors, panics, riots, social movements, and revolutions. Understanding the theoretical underpinnings of how these types of collective behavior may emerge will help first responders in both emergency management and law enforcement manage and control these behaviors.
This course is designed to familiarize students with how media and emergency and disaster response connect. Important topics to be covered are how media (social, news, and pop culture) can be a useful tool in preparation, response, mitigation, and recovery from disaster, as well as how media can work to the disadvantage of the emergency response cycle.
This course will explore mass casualty/high disruption weapons as a public health threat with an emphasis on health protection and response options for community members and first responders. This course examines multi-hazard emergency response frameworks; the structure/function of these weapons and their consequences to the population and community; and the cycle of preparedness, response, recovery, and mitigation to specific threats related to biological and chemical terrorism.
This course provides an introductory examination of the topic of missing persons and search and recovery (SAR). A focus of the course is to comprehend deployment procedures for the rescue and recovery of missing persons as well as to focus on interagency cooperation and the use of technology, tools, probability statistics, search theory, and equipment for successful SAR missions. For the purpose of this course, missing persons include stranger abductions, family abductions, human trafficking, and the murdered. It also includes runaways, skiptrackers, and the lost, i.e., substance abusers, despondents, hikers, hunters and “gatherers,” water-related missing persons, and those with dementia, mental illness, and autism. Mass-scale missing persons due to catastrophic events are also reviewed.
An overview of Geographical Information Systems (GIS) and other forms of emergency mapping for mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery.
The course will build on students’ basic knowledge of incident management systems by exploring the application of and issues with the use of the incident management system in an emergency or disaster situation.
Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS)/unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) systems, or drones, have become potential assets in the field of emergency and disaster management and law enforcement. Many government and non-government agencies are acquiring and using these systems in deployment operations. This course provides an overview of the foundations for the use of UAS systems in the emergency management and public safety field. Issues addressed in the class include UAS/UAV system types, system operations, current legal and ethical issues, the flight authorization process, flight safety, sense and avoid technologies, sensors and payloads, and human and societal factors involved with the use of drones.
Overview of relevant issues relating to the problems and practices of providing “homeland security.”
Design, development, and assessment of simulated exercises to evaluate and improve emergency readiness and response capabilities.
Overview of relevant federal and state statutes relating to emergency and disaster management and applicable legal concepts.
This course is designed to give students a unique perspective on how the agriculture, farm, and agribusiness community prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters. Emergency management has evolved over the past decade to look at the whole community - that is stakeholders outside the realm of emergency services. Agriculture, farm, and agribusiness have unique challenges related to disaster management in that there is no ‘one-size-fits-all’ approach, and the majority of impacts take place on private commercial property. This course will provide students insight into how a collaborative environment of government, business, and non-governmental organizations work to strengthen and protect the food and agriculture sector.
Examination of the origins, evolution, dimensions, and impacts of both domestic and international terrorism.
To prepare, respond, mitigate, and recover from disaster, financial resources are crucial. In addition, new ideas, programs, equipment, academic studies, and the advancement of science in the EDM field is contingent upon securing grant funding. This course will focus on students becoming familiar with grant availability search engines and how to locate a diversity of funding sources. Students will gain experience in converting ideas into grant potential projects or research and will learn how to address specific criteria attached to grants to yield a higher success rate.
In-depth examination of specific public crises and disasters.
Independent Study in Emergency and Disaster Management
Supervised application of academic study in a practical public safety and/or security management setting.
Topics in Emergency and Disaster Management
This capstone course is designed to give students a forum to apply the knowledge and skill they have acquired throughout their education to real-world situations, and to capture the learning objectives attached to courses in the field of emergency and disaster management measured primarily through demonstrating ability in academic research and applied skill to addressing problems in the planning, mitigation, response, and recovery to manmade or natural disaster. This course also has a career-based component whereby students are required to implement post-graduation plans by means of improving interviewing skills, resume writing, and job searching capabilities. Additionally, this course will be used to gather program-level data for continuous improvement assessments in achieving student and program objectives.
Source: Western Carolina University's catalog, linked per course · table learning_unit · CourseShelf publish 61
