Undergraduate Program

Course Credit: 3

Disasters are no longer considered isolated events but are now addressed as complex phenomena with multidisciplinary dimensions. Over the years, the frequency and intensity of disasters have increased multifold. With the growing population, more and more infrastructures are being developed; creating more elements at risk and, sometimes, creating new risks as well. To understand the risks of disasters, it is essential to understand the earth system and the processes governing the planet. The earth and its components can act as a source of hazards as well as the elements at risk. This course offers the concept and framework of modern scientific approach for studying disasters, its key components and terminologies, and its integrated relationship with the earth system.

Course Credit: 3

Basics of Climatology and Meteorology is an introductory course for learning various physical process that determine climate and weather. In this course, students will learn the basic concept of atmospheric sciences, learn to classify world into different climatic region. Introduction to different climatic extremes and Bangladesh perspectives of climate and weather will also include in this course.

Course Credit: 3

Knowledge of environment and ecosystem is important to understand the surrounding nature. Mechanism of environment and ecosystem will help to study disaster science scientifically. Studying Environment and Ecosystem involves sustainable development: Renewable energy sources, Soil conservation, high-efficiency irrigation, organic agriculture, Pollution reduction, Habitat and species protection, Recycling, Fighting global climate change.

Course Credit: 3

This course is intending to develop basic concepts and skills on differential and integral calculus and its application for solving technical problems, particularly in disaster and climate sciences.

Course Credit: 2

Mapping and surveying are some of the important lab techniques to reconnaissance field conditions to design a project. This course introduces surveying methods and techniques. In the field of disaster risk reduction map can aid in different way in all phases of disaster management. This course is designed to teach students about theoretical background of cartography. The student will also learn how to prepare, read, and use maps.

Course Credit: 2

Viva vocé (“living voice”), by tradition, is an oral examination that is carried out not as a substitute, but to complement the written exam. The course is designed to ensure the development of the student’s ability to apply, analyze, evaluate and create using the acquired knowledge along with the ability to remember and understand. This course is unique in a sense that it does not have a scheduled class time but the all the courses up to 3rd semester and before constitutes the syllabus. Also, this course is designed to ensure a comprehensive understanding of the subject as a whole with clear a conceptual framework which can help the students explain, evaluate and create the correlations among the individual courses.

Course Credit: 3

Earth materials and the processes interact among themselves to configure the shape of the earth’s surface. However, this system is dynamic and the changes often lead to catastrophes or disasters. Different agents drive different processes and, result in diverse configurations and various associated deposits. Each geomorphic feature is associated with different hazards. The earth and its components can act as a source of hazards as well as the elements at risk. This course builds on the basics of earth sciences provided in DSCRHT 101 courses and provides deeper knowledge of topics that are essential to understand disasters and their impacts.

Course Credit: 2

Atmospheric physics is important for weather forecast modeling. This course will help to understand the physical processes in the atmosphere, such as radiation, clouds and sub-grid scale processes, understand the fluid flow equations and chemical models, physical parametrization, etc.

Course Credit: 3

Hydrological hazards constitute a large portion of the disasters and often result in massive damage and loss. To better understand the hazards, it is essential to understand different components of the water cycle and the processes the drive them. The course focuses on the fundamentals of surface and subsurface hydrology including terminologies, process, chemistry and anthropogenic influences. The course also incorporates the water resources of Bangladesh and the importance of Integrated Water Resource Management to reduce disaster risk.

Course Credit: 2

Globally, disasters are on the increase due to climate change, impacting communities and nations with grave social and economic consequences and threatening the survival, dignity and livelihoods of the vulnerable sections of their populations. Shifting socio-economic situations, unplanned urbanization, environmental degradation, climate variability and change, geological hazards, competition for scarce natural resources, and the threat of epidemics are factors that compound the impact of disasters. This course adopts an interdisciplinary perspective appropriate to analyze these complex issues. This course addresses all stages of climate resilience and disaster management in a comprehensive and holistic manner from societal perspectives. In the first half of the course students will examine different theories and frameworks for understanding the link between society and disasters and climate. This will provide a critical platform for the second part of the course, where students will focus on different thematic areas of disasters governance and society, using case study disasters and climate resilience from Bangladesh and all around the world.

Course Credit: 2

This course study will provide knowledge of the linear domain, nature of liner problem, a different method of solving linear problems.

Course Credit: 2

This course will begin with an overview of data types and descriptive Statistics. There will be extensive coverage of probability topics along with an introduction to discrete and continuous probability distributions. The course also includes some discussion on linear regression and estimation using confidence intervals and hypothesis testing. 

Course Credit: 2

The course offers specimen study minerals, rocks, and soils which are the building blocks of the crust. The study of these materials not only play a vital role in interpreting the geological history of the Earth but also empowers the student to identify these in nature which can be used to assess further environmental issues, potential hazard scenarios. The course builds on the theory course DSCRHT-107.

Course Credit: 2

Fieldwork provides an 'unparalleled opportunity' to study the real world. It reinforces classroom based learning; and triggers all three domains of the educational learning. The fieldwork allows a higher order of cognitive learning, directly develops the psychomotor learning and inspires affective learning. Field studies require integration of content knowledge, observation and interpretation, analysis, experiment and theory and all their representations. All lines of evidence need to come together to form a coherent, internally consistent interpretation. Practices that are emphasized in the field instruction such as question-asking, observation, representation, and communication are important to the formative training of the students. This course mainly comprises of field activities complimented by theory classes. The fieldwork is carried out in a hilly terrain, usually Jaintiapur-Tamabil, Sylhet for 3-5 days where the student grasp the concept of field study and use their knowledge to conduct the fieldwork, interpret the data, determine the regional structures, mapping, depositional sedimentary environment, stratigraphy, social surveying, identification of hazard and environmental problems.

Course Credit: 3

In the sciences and engineering, mathematical models are developed to aid in the understanding of physical phenomena. These models often yield an equation that contains some derivatives of an unknown function. Such an equation is called a differential equation. Therefore, to understand and to investigate problems involving the motion of fluids, the flow of current in electric circuits, the dissipation of heat in solid objects, the propagation and detection of seismic waves, or the increase or decrease of populations, among many others, it is necessary to know something about differential equations. That is why, from the early days of the calculus the subject of differential equations has been an area of great theoretical research and practical applications, and it continues to be so in our day.

Course Credit: 2

Among the different types of disaster, the geological and hydro-meteorological hazards are the most commonly occurring as well as most devastating in terms of damage and loss. Climate change has further deteriorated the situation causing an increase in the amplitude for the hazards. The course has been designed to better understand the basic characteristics of these hazards; frequency, magnitude and intensity variability, types, spatial and temporal distribution, impacts etc. After the completion of the course, the student will be able to identify; characterize and analyze these hazards. The assessment of hazard is an essential component for risk assessment, and consequent sustainable disaster risk reduction measures. Hence, the course addresses different aspects of the earthquake, landslide, subsidence, flood, tsunami, erosion etc. Due to the geographic location, tectonic settings the above-mentioned hazards pose serious threat; this course briefly incorporates the present status of these hazards in different parts of Bangladesh.

Course Credit: 2

In the course “Basics of Climatology and Meteorology” students get the basic ideas about atmospheric processes that determine weather and climate. In this course student will use their knowledge from “Basics of Climatology and Meteorology” to learn the causes, description, distribution of different climatic/hazards elaborately. Student will also learn climate change: causes, evidences, impact, response as well as global political issues regarding climate change.

Course Credit: 2

Human induced hazards are growing in recent industrialized and urban settlement especially in Bangladesh. This course mainly deals with hazards in industry due to natural and human activity.

Course Credit: 3

This course encompasses climate resilience and public health.  Identification, personal protective equipment, symptoms of exposure and abatement of biological hazards are covered in great detail in this course. This course is intended to familiarize students with a wide range of biological hazards that may be encountered in community- and work environments, including commercial, nonindustrial, industrial and health care settings. Also, this course is designed to provide an overview of public health and from the perspective of climate resilience covering topics such as the legal basis and history of public health, public health structure, communications and interactions, and epidemiology. Emphasis will be placed on the role of the public health core functions, its role in policy development, infectious disease, climate resilience issues, emergency preparedness, global issues, and public health research.

Course Credit: 2

This course highlights the overall concept of the built environment and the impacts of natural and man-made disasters on it. The contents of the course include prevailing rules and regulations to build a resilient built environment. The course will explore the role of the construction industry in post-disaster reconstruction and making the built environment more resilient by applying the concept of build back better.

Course Credit: 2

In this course the student will gain a broad understanding of modern computer programming. The student will acquire introductory skills in problem analysis, solution design, and program construction. Through practical programming activities, the student will gain an appreciation of the nature and history of computer programming.

Course Credit: 2

Pollution measurement with the lab techniques is very important for environmental impact assessment (EIA) to implement any project. This course introduces various methods and measurement techniques required to apply theoretical knowledge acquired in DSCRHT 103 (Theory) courses. This course aims to study pollution in the Bangladesh and its neighboring nations in general.

Course Credit: 3

Earthquake is the most frequently occurring and most devastating hazard to date. Seismology deals with the scientific approach towards the study of earthquakes, the propagating elastic waves and their characteristics. Coupled with geodesy, seismology helps better understand earthquakes, their characteristics, and possible associated hazards.

Course Credit: 2

This course will introduce students to a wide range of statistical sampling techniques that are used to make inferences about a population. The part on numerical analysis will present a broad range of numerical methods for solving mathematical problems that arise in Science and Engineering.

Course Credit: 2

The course will look into the topics related to the history of Bangladesh and the evolution of the disaster management practices throughout the history. There will be comparative discussions between the approaches of colonial, post colonial and post liberation periods. It will also shed light on the administrative structure and working modalities of the government of Bangladesh.

Course Credit: 2

Remote Sensing has become the ideal method for both rapid and detailed investigations. The technique allows the ability to investigate from a distance; conveniently eliminating the time required for mobilization, especially during post disaster damage and need assessment. Also, the technique allows better understanding of phenomena at a regional scale that can be difficult on field. Remote sensing can also provide reconnaissance survey for detailed field study afterwards saving time and resource.

Course Credit: 2

This course is for introducing the students with the state-of-the-art technology and tools called Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for spatial planning. GIS is a system for geospatial data capturing, editing, manipulating, storing, analyzing and presentation. GIS plays a major role in the field of Disaster Risk Reduction and Climate Change studies by answering the five questions – 1. Location what is at..? 2. Situation/Condition where does it exist? 3. Trends what has changed since...? 4. Patterns what spatial patterns exist? 5. Modeling What if...?

Course Credit: 2

The disasters have increased multifold over the years. For a sustainable solution and carrying out risk management and crisis management activities, Understanding and accurately analyzing risk is essential. Remote sensing has become the preferred technique for both rapid and detailed assessments. It is efficient in terms of time and resource with an appreciable accuracy.

Course Credit: 2

Geographical Information System (GIS) is very important to understand the spatial distribution. This course includes tools and techniques required to apply theoretical knowledge acquired in DSCRHT 213 (Theory) course.

Course Credit: 2

The lab will cover material that complements and enriches the content covered in DSCR 112 and DSCR 210. Lab sessions early in the semester will review some of the statistics that will be needed in the course. The lab will also provide an introduction to the R statistical programming package, which the students will use in future courses.

Course Credit: 2

Fieldwork provides an 'unparalleled opportunity' to study the real world. It reinforces classroom-based learning; and triggers all three domains of the educational learning. The fieldwork allows a higher order of cognitive learning, directly develops the psychomotor learning and inspires affective learning. Field studies require integration of content knowledge, observation and interpretation, analysis, experiment and theory and all their representations. All lines of evidence need to come together to form a coherent, internally consistent interpretation. Practices that are emphasized in the field instruction such as question-asking, observation, representation, and communication are important to the formative training of the students. This course mainly comprises of field activities complimented by theory classes. The fieldwork is carried out in one of the hazard prone areas of Bangladesh. The field incorporates the initial characterization of hazards from the remotely sensed historical data to identify and analyze hotspots; assess the overall the hazard scenario, vulnerability and exposure using remotely sensed historical data, field observation, measurements, social surveying and geographical information systems in order to finally analyze the risk for the specific hazard.

Course Credit: 2

Viva vocé (“living voice”), by tradition, is an oral examination that is carried out not as a substitute, but to complement the written exam. The course is designed to ensure the development of the student’s ability to apply, analyze, evaluate and create using the acquired knowledge along with the ability to remember and understand. This course is unique in a sense that it does not have a scheduled class time but the all the courses up to 3rd semester and before constitutes the syllabus. Also, this course is designed to ensure a comprehensive understanding of the subject as a whole with clear a conceptual framework which can help the students explain, evaluate and create the correlations among the individual courses.

Course Credit: 2

This course is for introducing student with the concept of disaster mitigation, prevention and preparedness aspects for building a resilient community. This includes hazard specific mitigation, preparedness measures; structural and non-structural mitigation options.

Course Credit: 3

Vulnerability is the degree of loss to a given element at risk (or set of elements) resulting from a given hazard at a given severity level. The distinction between this definition and that of risk is important to note. Risk combines the expected losses from all levels of hazard severity, taking account also of their occurrence probability. The ‘intangible’ aspects of vulnerability will often be as important as the quantifiable aspects. The vulnerability and risk assessment is considered the one of the most important, if not the most important core of disaster management framework. Disaster management has seen a shift in paradigm from being crisis management focused to risk management focused. Risk assessment portion of the risk management framework consists of Risk analysis and Risk evaluation. Risk analysis generally contains the following steps: hazard identification, hazard assessment, elements at risk/exposure analysis, vulnerability assessment and risk estimation. The course has been preceded by hazard assessments and will be succeeded by sector wise Risk treatment/control to identify hazard-type wise risk reduction measures for conceptualization of the sustainable risk management framework.

Course Credit: 2

Bottom-up approach of planning in case of disaster management is considered as a better option for building community resilience. Accordingly, assessment of the risk by the community and devising risk reduction initiatives by themselves gives better results. Considering the scenario, this course is designed to make the students understand and apply the concept of risk assessment by the community itself.

Course Credit: 3

Geophysical tools are becoming increasingly popular to better understand the subsurface scenario. The information is essential to understand the behavior of natural hazards through the subsurface, occurrence of a hazardous event within the subsurface, and the subsurface characteristics so that human infrastructures can be built accordingly without generating newer and higher risk.

Course Credit: 3

This Course will provide different theory and available tools in area engineering geology and geotechnical engineering to deal with the geotechnical hazards.

Course Credit: 2

This course will introduce the basic concept of urban and regional planning issues to the student in context of disaster risk mitigation. Students will also learn current issues of urban and regional planning and development.

Course Credit: 2

This course lab will introduce various geotechnical lab tests and geotechnical investigations to determine the index and dynamic soil properties.

Course Credit: 2

Due to population growth and development land use planning is becoming a very important issues nowadays. It is important of assess risk of land before initiation of any development work otherwise development will increase risk of disaster. In this course student will learn to know how risk factors are instigated with land use planning and how we can use it to achieve resilience.

Course Credit: 3

The course has three major focus areas. Firstly, it will discuss about the issues of the evolution of development ideas and the changing patterns of development paradigms in the context of climate change and sustainable development. Secondly, it will shed light on the basic concepts of micro and macro economics. Finally, a comparative discussion of the economic and development thoughts will be made in the context of Bangladesh.

Course Credit: 3

Earthquake disasters account for the highest damage and loss. It is essential that the policy and the infrastructures are developed considering earthquake risks. The earthquake itself cannot be controlled but there are different approaches to reduce the associated risks. This course builds on the courses titled “Seismology and Geodesy” and “Vulnerability and Risk Assessment”.

Course Credit: 3

Hydro-meteorological hazards are the two most frequent and impact communities and nations all around the world with grave social and economic consequences and threatening the survival, dignity and livelihoods of the vulnerable sections of their population. The course incorporates risk assessment and discusses possible structural and non-structural risk reduction measures for different hydro-meteorological hazards, i.e. flood, riverbank erosion, tsunami, landslides, groundwater contamination etc.

Course Credit: 2

This course will introduce population issues, concepts, theories and methods by encompassing the entire field of demography, including principle and practice. It offers an overview of various aspects of demographic growth and transition relating to changes in health and mortality, fertility, migration, age structure, urbanization, family and household structure. This course also examines the relations between population and development and their potential consequences from a social, economic and geographical perspective. Moreover, this course will provide an overview of the different perspectives of migration and refugee numbers and trends, causes of population movements, the impact of environmental migration, and promotes the formulation of innovative and practical responses to population movements and shelter management issues of migrants and refugees. Other topics include global variation in population size and growth, various demographic perspectives and their modern implications, environmental impacts, and population policy.

Course Credit: 2

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 vulnerability among marginalized populations.

Course Credit: 2

The disasters have increased multifold over the years. For a sustainable solution and carrying out risk management and crisis management activities, Understanding and accurately analyzing hazard is essential. The scientific approach to studying and analyzing hazards can lead to better understanding of the phenomenon and, it provides a framework for suitable actions and decisions for the policymakers. There has been a paradigm shift in disaster management approach from being crisis management oriented towards risk management focused. This course comprises of risk reduction approaches developing the generic and scenario based risk modeling of the major natural hazards as well as for major man-made hazards. With the completion of the course, the students will be able to make an application-oriented vulnerability and risk assessment and develop a hazard specific as well as multi-hazard risk reduction/mitigation plans.

Course Credit: 2

Fieldwork provides an 'unparalleled opportunity' to study the real world. It reinforces classroom-based learning; and triggers all three domains of educational learning. The fieldwork allows a higher order of cognitive learning, directly develops the psychomotor learning and inspires affective learning. Field studies require integration of content knowledge, observation and interpretation, analysis, experiment and theory and all their representations. All lines of evidence need to come together to form a coherent, internally consistent interpretation. Practices that are emphasized in the field instruction such as question-asking, observation, representation, and communication are important to the formative training of the students. This course mainly comprises field activities complimented by theory classes. The fieldwork is carried out in one of the hazard prone areas of Bangladesh, preferably in a coastal district that faces salinity, drinking water scarcity as well as being exposed to strong storm surges caused by cyclones. The field incorporates the extensive characterization of hazards from the remotely sensed historical data to identify and analyze hazard hotspots. The field strongly emphasizes in-depth vulnerability and exposure analysis and consequent risk assessment through different social surveying tools complemented by field observation for multi hazard scenarios. The course helps the students identify possible risk reduction measures and evaluate them.

Course Credit: 2

Viva vocé (“living voice”), by tradition, is an oral examination that is carried out not as a substitute, but to complement the written exam. The course is designed to ensure the development of the student’s ability to apply, analyze, evaluate and create using the acquired knowledge along with the ability to remember and understand.

Course Credit: 3

Emergency Management is complex but important. Planning is done based on various context - Emergency Management Context, Public Policy Context and Jurisdictional Context. Again Emergency management differs from Emergency operation. Emergency and crisis planning deals with preparedness, recovery and emergency communications etc. This course covers planning aspects of emergency for effective emergency operations and deals with crisis management and discusses the framework, approaches, best practices of crisis management (response and recovery).

Course Credit: 2

The course has two major focus areas. Firstly, it will discuss the conceptual issues of institution and institutional theories. This part will discuss the ideas about the evolution of institutional theory, new institutionalism, good governance etc. The second part is applied as it focuses on the institutional aspects of disaster management and climate resilience in the country. This latter part will discuss the role of different formal and informal, government and nongovernment, national and international institutions in the context of Bangladesh and their roles in disaster and climate resilience.

Course Credit: 3

This course is designed to introduce different models used in Atmospheric science and climate change study to the students. Adaptation to climate change is also discussed in this course as well.

Course Credit: 3

The goal of Research Methodology is to learn how research is being done, and to put that knowledge into practice. The primary objective of this course is to reacquaint students with a variety of research traditions and related methodological and epistemological issues. First, the course will look at what it means to do research, the role of power in research relationships, and challenges posed by quantitative and qualitative data as well as critical research practices and mixed methods approaches. Second, the course aims to offer students an opportunity to address current methodological issues as they pertain to their own research interests thereby providing each with the potential to knowledgeably justify and explain her or his chosen methodology and method.

Course Credit: 3

The risk management includes preparedness which leads to warn people for any impeding disaster to mitigate damage and losses. So prediction and early warning is vital in the disaster management cycle. This course actually covers all the aspects to establish a people-centered robust early warning system to reach the community/household at the last mile. The course also clearly demarcate between community managed and community based Early Warning System (EWS).

Course Credit: 2

This course lab will cover machine learning basics, evaluation metrics, various algorithms and deep learning, for example, ANN, BNN and CNN. Game theory, agent-based modeling and simulation and different type’s optimization technique will also be covered. In addition to machine learning different numerical methods (AEM, FEM, FVM, FDM, BEM, and DEM) will be addressed in this lab.

Course Credit: 2

This lab has two main focus areas. The major focus area of the lab is Geoinformatics. Geoinformatics, which includes Remote Sensing, Geographic Information System, Global Positioning Systems, and Internet Mapping Services, provides the most powerful technology for all phases of disaster management i.e. hazard mapping, monitoring, risk assessment, emergency response and reconstruction including early warning. Secondly, this lab will also discuss about the application of Management Information System (MIS) for disaster management and climate change. Major topics would include database management, effective utilizations of natural resources database in event of disaster and building decision support system for better administration.

Course Credit: 2

The course has three major focus areas. They are the damage, loss and need assessment in the post disaster context. This course discusses about the established methods of damage and loss assessment and their application in different socioeconomic sectors. The sector specific damage and loss assessment follows the post-disaster need assessment.

Course Credit: 2

Smallholder farmers in Bangladesh are heavily rely on their local environments and natural resources i.e. land, water and energy for agricultural production and livelihoods. Thus, these vital resources provide the backbone of many rural livelihoods and their stability is key to securing the wellbeing of their entire communities.  This course will equip with knowledge on protecting people’s agriculture-based livelihoods from shocks and strengthening their capacity to absorb the impact of, and recover from, disruptive climatic events. This is a necessary ingredient for sustainable food and nutrition security. This course is also in line with the UN-led sustainable development goal. The present course aims to fill the current knowledge gap on the nature and magnitude of impacts of disasters triggered by natural and human-induced hazards on the agriculture sector and its subsectors (crops, livestock fisheries and forestry) in Bangladesh and other developing countries. The course will take an innovative approach to design well-informed risk reduction strategies and mitigation measures within the agriculture sector; several challenges also will be addressed to improve the information systems on the impact of farm production.

Course Credit: 2

The course has two major focus areas. Firstly, it will discuss the cross cutting issues of concerns in the disaster risk reduction agenda. And secondly, it focuses on the integration of these concerns into the development policy planning.

Course Credit: 2

This course aims at equipping the students with some applied knowledge of project management. All the disaster risk mitigation and reconstruction work demand formulation of projects and their regular monitoring and evaluation. The course focuses on the project life cycle approach to development, and provides the tools for good project planning, monitoring and evaluation. The environmental and social safeguard policy and compliance issues included in the course, provides the tools for mitigating conflicts with the affected communities and for better outcome.

Course Credit: 2

This lab mainly aims to draw the conceptual aspects from DSCRHT 408 and practically apply them with real world data. This will talk about the application of damage, loss and need assessment tools in different socioeconomic sectors.

Course Credit: 6

In order to develop skilled personnel in problem identification, work-methodologies, scientific interpretation, producing a standard report; individual student shall carry out a supervised study independently on a specified topic (i.e., a Project assigned to them by the Academic Committee of the department). On completion of the Project, each student shall defend and submit written Project Report on the work undertaken. Upon the decision of Academic Committee project may also be completed by group work as well with field visit. Students may also carry out non-paid internship if academic committee could make liaison with organization/NGO/Agency or Industry

Course Credit: 2

Viva vocé (“living voice”), by tradition, is an oral examination that is carried out not as a substitute, but to complement the written exam. The course is designed to ensure the development of the student’s ability to apply, analyze, evaluate and create using the acquired knowledge along with the ability to remember and understand. This course is unique in a sense that it does not have a scheduled class time but the all the courses up to 3rd semester and before constitutes the syllabus. Also, this course is designed to ensure a comprehensive understanding of the subject as a whole with clear a conceptual framework which can help the students explain, evaluate and create the correlations among the individual courses.