Course Listing
REQUIRED COURSES
1. Natural disasters: conceptual, theoretical and legal framework
Conceptual evolution of threat, risk, vulnerability, susceptibility and resilience. Disaster risk management and its macroprocesses: prevention, preparation, response and recovery. Natural disasters in Brazil: floods, landslides, droughts, windstorms, hail, tornadoes. Classification methods of natural disasters in Brazil and in the world. Risk and disaster management in Brazil. Law No. 12608/2012. Hyogo Framework for Action. National Disaster Risk Reduction Platforms.
2. Environmental monitoring and geotechnologies in risk and natural disaster management
Analysis of environmental data, meteorological systems and phenomena for weather monitoring. Hydrological modeling applied to watershed monitoring systems. Monitoring of geological and geotechnical variables in the prevention of natural disasters. Information Technology applied to environmental monitoring. Fundamentals of cartography and geoprocessing applied to risk mapping and monitoring and warning of natural disasters.
3. Risk and natural disaster management
Risk management and natural disasters: prevention, response and recovery; vulnerability diagnosis; risk mapping and natural disaster prevention. Information Technology applied to monitoring and warning of natural disasters. Territorial planning and risk and natural disaster management: land use and occupation in risk areas; master plans and risk management; urban infrastructure in risk areas; territorial management in areas of socio-environmental vulnerability.
4. Scientific Methodology and Research Seminar
Epistemology of scientific research. Research methodologies. Interdisciplinarity. Transdisciplinarity. The processes of science (research, intervention and evaluation); the structure of a scientific paper (article, review, report and monograph); and the structure of a scientific paper presentation (research seminar).
ELLECTIVE COURSES
Line of Research: Geological, meteorological and hydrological processes and natural disasters
1. Global physical climatology
Introduction to the climate system: atmosphere, ocean and land surface. Global energy balance. Atmosphere radiation balance. Surface energy balance. Hydrological cycle. Atmospheric general circulation and climate. Ocean general circulation and climate. Atmospheric systems. History and evolution of Earth’s climate. Climate sensitivity and feedback mechanisms. Global climate models. Natural climate change. Anthropogenic climate change. South American climate. El Niño-Southern Oscillation phenomenon and impacts on climate.
2. Meteorology applied to natural disasters
Meteorological principles, large- and meso-scale meteorological events, extreme meteorological phenomena.
3. Hydrology applied to natural disaster analysis
Hydrological cycle. Relationship between rain and flow. Soil water infiltration and landslides. Integrated watershed management: structural and non-structural solutions to prevent flooding and landslides.
4. Geological and geomorphological processes and natural disasters
Geological-geomorphological processes and natural disaster risks associated with gravitational slope movements; soil subsidence and collapse; continental and river bank erosion; river channel siltation and coastal erosion. Natural and human-induced risks. Subsidies from geological-geomorphological mapping for territorial management and land use and occupation planning, aimed at reducing risks and disasters.
5. Geotechnics applied to risk area mapping
Basic concepts; types of geotechnical charts/maps and main elaboration methods. Physical environment components and principles of geotechnical zoning. Geological-geomorphological mapping applied to geoenvironmental risk mapping.
6. Time series analysis
Review of inferential statistics. Classical Decomposition; Moving Average; Simple Exponential Damping; Holt; HoltWinters; Simple Regression; Multiple Regression. Forecast Error Monitoring.
7. High-performance computing applied to natural disaster prevention
Basic concepts of high performance computing: parallel architecture; parallel program models. Parallel processing. Communication models and memory architecture. Cache coherence. Shared memory architecture, synchronization, memory consistency models. Performance of multiprocessor and multicomputers. Device interconnection. Interconnection networks. Computer clusters. Parallel programming environments (MPI, OpenMP). Experimental evaluation of parallel programs.
8. Environmental modeling applied to natural disaster prediction and prevention
Introduction to Matlab, basic statistics, regression, least squares, curve fitting, interpolation, introduction to the study of partial differential equations. Fundamentals of finite difference methods. Application of finite difference methods (advection, wave propagation and diffusion), finite volumes, mesh generation.
9 – Special topics on physical processes and natural disasters I
Further theoretical and practical aspects related to the various topics related to the “Geological, meteorological and hydrological processes and natural disasters” line of research. Seminars or presentation of topics of current interest.
10 – Special topics on physical processes and natural disasters II
Further theoretical and practical aspects on the various topics related to the “Geological, meteorological and hydrological processes and natural disasters” line of research. Seminars or presentation of topics of current interest.
Line of Research: Social vulnerability and risk and natural disaster management
1. Social vulnerability, sectoral policies and natural disaster prevention
The social, cultural, economic, environmental, sociological and institutional causes and characteristics that constitute the vulnerability of a society to face the increasing occurrence of natural disasters. Risk, different ontological assumptions, different methodological stances and applications, and the complexity of contemporary society in its different clashes and natures.
2. Risk scenarios and natural disaster management
Risk scenarios: types of risk variables, risk scenario identification techniques. Risk bearing topics and facts. Alerts and natural disaster management. The relationship between risk and alert and management.
3. Natural disasters and crisis management
Emergency administration and management and Public Civil Defense system. Operations Command System for Natural Disasters. Risk management, risk perception and risk communication. Systemic approach to emergency (crisis) management in natural disasters. Tools for prevention, preparation, response and reconstruction in the disasters (contingency plans, relief actions, assistance, restoration, recovery and communication processes). Strategic planning as a tool for disaster prevention and crisis management.
4. Emergency construction and housing in risk areas
Study of design and construction variables of buildings for assistance in emergency situations. Typologies constructive tools suitable for emergency situations. Analysis of processes, materials and intervention techniques in areas of risks. Building evaluation and recovery systems. Analysis of processes, materials and techniques of intervention and rehabilitation of buildings.
5. Conflict Management in Natural Disasters
The National Disaster Risk Management Plan; the different characterizations of natural disasters in the management process (forensic aspects of natural disasters; impacts resulting from natural disasters; natural disasters as financial economic liabilities; natural disasters as property and non-property damage; the decision-making process for responding to disasters as conflicts; the natural disaster management process).
6. Information technologies applied to natural disaster monitoring and warning
Basic concepts: data, information, information systems. Information and communication technologies: software, hardware, communication networks. Organization of data and information. Database Management Systems. SQL. Data collection and processing systems. Geographic Information Systems. Information systems on the internet. Decision support systems. Applications in the environmental area, disaster prevention and treatment.
7. Special topics in risk and natural disaster managementmanagement I
Further theoretical and practical aspects on various topics related to the “Social vulnerability and risk and natural disaster management” line of research. Seminar or presentation of topics of current interest.
8. Special topics in risk and natural disaster management II
Further theoretical and practical aspects on various topics related to the “Social vulnerability and risk and natural disaster management” line of research. Seminar or presentation of topics of current interest.