This workshop introduces a learning unit on “Cases in disaster risk management and decision making”. The objectives of this unit are to expose students to real cases of disaster risk management and to train them to make difficult risk management choices by developing their abilities to:
- apply formal analytic methods for disaster risk management and to determine which risk management choices are good or bad;
- develop strong arguments in favour of the choice one has selected, and to question one’s own arguments and listen to countervailing views;
- ground one’s choices in scientific/analytical methods, approaches, frameworks or theories (see background provided in the DRM distance learning unit), and question the applicability of the scientific theory to the choice at hand.
With the proposed method, students repeat the practice of appraising a risk management problem, come up with ideas about how to solve that problem, and reflect on the process in terms of what worked and did not work. In class, students either discuss the cases that they have read before, or present their assignments and reflect on lessons learnt.