Introduction to Emergency Management

Explore global emergency management with Massey University

This four-week course will introduce you to emergency management to help you better prepare for, manage, and recover from emergencies.

Throughout the course, you will be provided with risk and emergency management examples from around the world to help you become familiar with the fundamental concepts.

You’ll also learn from internationally recognised emergency management experts associated with Massey University. Some of the experts you will meet have managed emergencies such as the Canterbury earthquake of 2011.

Unpack organisational and community resilience

Resilience is a key component of emergency management. Within this course, you will explore factors that impact community and organisational resilience and the best ways to build resilience.

This knowledge will also help you better understand risks and how you can reduce risk through planning.

Delve into risk response

With the knowledge of planning for risks, you’ll explore risk response management and how you can ensure both organisational and community readiness.

Understanding the importance of collaboration and coordination, you’ll learn how to best support communities with risk reduction and disaster response. You’ll also discover the emergency response frameworks you can use in your context.

Explore emergency and disaster recovery

On the final week of the course, you’ll investigate recovery management methods from both emergencies and disasters.

You’ll delve further into readiness for recovery and the role of insurance as you investigate different case studies to see these concepts in practice.

By the end of the course, you’ll have the knowledge of emergency management and how you can best prepare communities and the environment for emergency response.

This course is designed for anyone interested in preparing for and managing the risks associated with disasters.

Anyone who is concerned about disasters, lives on a fault line, a bushland setting, or is involved in local governments or emergency services will also benefit from this course.

• It starts with Risk
• Welcome to emergency management
• Emergency management defined
• The importance of emergency management
• How emergency management has evolved
• Legislative considerations
• The role of legislation
• Case study: Canterbury earthquakes
• Case study: Queensland floods
• Determining risk
• Case study: New Orleans
• Case study: Wellington tsunami
• Risk readiness & resilience
• Community resilience during emergencies
• Community resilience indicators
• Growing resilient communities
• Organisational resilience in the face of emergency
• What exactly is risk?
• Climate change and Emergency Management
• Planning is everything
• How to reduce the level of risk
• Risk response management, collaboration, & coordination
• Contemporary response measures
• Being ready for emergency management in organisations
• Being ready to respond as a community
• Community support and engagement
• Frameworks to assist with responding to emergencies
• The powers that be
• Planning to respond
• Lessons learned
• Collaborating to reduce risk
• The importance of international cooperation
• Emergency/Disaster Recovery
• The Basics of Recovery Management
• The Long-term Impacts of Recovery Management
• Readiness: The Key to Recovery
• Insurance During a Time of Recovery
• Models to Support Recovery
• What is the Process of Recovery?
• The Psychosocial Aspects of Resilience and Recovery
• Resilient Communities
• Recovery Barriers
• Course Conclusion