Lecture

The Context of Disasters: Search for Root Causes

David Alexander (University College London)

January 11, 2019, 11h00

Keynes Room, Faculty of Economics, University of Coimbra

Overview


Lecture within the Third UCL/CES(UC) Joint Annual Initiative, directed to the CES Doctoral Programmes students.


Bionote

David Alexander is a 
Professor at the University College London and researcher at the Institute for Risk & Disaster Reduction - University College London.and Chief Senior Scientist at the Global Risk Forum, in Davos (Switzland). Amongst other book released «Natural Disasters» (Routledge, 2001), «Confronting Catastrophe» (Oxford University Press, 2000) and «Principles of Emergency Planning and Management» (Oxford University Press, 2002). Editor-in-chief at the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction and founder of the Institute of Civil Protection and Emergency Management. Is also Visiting Professor at the Universities of Bournemouth and Northumbria (UK)

Research Interests
David Alexander carries out research in diverse aspects of disaster risk, impact and response. In his work on earthquake epidemiology, he has studied the causes and patterns of death and injury in major seismic events. He is currently co-authoring a book on recovery from disaster and writing another on emergency planning. He conducts research on methods of disaster response planning and management, and on theoretical modelling of disasters. He is engaged on work with the Council of Europe on researching plans and methods to improve the quality of assistance to people with disabilities who are threatened by risks or affected by disaster.

Teaching Interests
David Alexander's teaching mainly concerns holistic aspects of disaster risk reduction and practical matters in emergency planning and management. For many years he has taught courses on how to formulate and apply emergency plans, both generally and in the context of different contingencies and sectors, including business continuity, cultural heritage protection, medical emergency response and industrial disaster management. David Alexander was trained as a geographer and geomorphologist and for more than three decades he has maintained teaching and research interests in natural hazards and their consequences. He is particularly interested in the characterisation and assessment of vulnerability to major hazards.


Organisation | Institute for Interdisciplinary Research/Centre for Social Studies (UC)/Doctoral Programme «Territory, Risk and Public Policies»