BSc Minor Disaster and Recovery (WUDIR) / BSc

Profile

Every year, a number of major climate-related disasters captures the global headlines, while an even greater number has serious impacts at local or regional scales. Increasingly, professionals from a range of disciplines at Wageningen UR confront challenges related to disaster response and recovery, in the developing world as well as closer to home. This minor intends to prepare Wageningen students from both the social and the technical sciences for these challenges. It offers them the conceptual tools and professional competencies to develop an effective and responsible engagement with recovery processes.
Disasters affect not only the built environment, but also damage agricultural production systems and socio-economic institutions. Where the capacity to recover is limited, livelihoods and social stability tend to suffer lasting consequences. Effective and sustainable recovery needs to address these multiple dimensions and reduce disaster risk in the future. This minor works with the concept of resilience as a central notion, referring to the capacity of social and productive systems to absorb future shocks. Education will be case-based, integrating analysis and design solutions around specific cases. The course addresses the social-institutional and the technical-design dimensions of recovery in their interaction.

Learning Outcomes

After successful completion of this minor students are expected to be able to: - understand, on a basic level, the origins and impacts of disasters; - analyse the interrelation between social and technical dimensions of recovery; - understand the concept of resilience and operationalize it to their specific field of expertise; - analyse and design solutions for recovery in their field of expertise; - engage in an interdisciplinary environment.

BSc Minor Coordinator

Dr ir G. van der Haar
Phone: 0317 (4)83514
Email: gemma.vanderhaar@wur.nl

Target Group

This minor is interesting for WU-students of the BSc programmes International Development Studies (BIN), International land and water management (BIL), and BMW. Also for other BSc students in Development Studies and Geography, Development studies and Ecology, Environmental sciences, Dutch and international.