CVEN 5909: Hazards, Resilience & Sustainability for the Natural & Built Environment

In-Person, Fall

Course Description

Introduces students to the effects of global climate change on natural and built environments, including its impact on the frequency and intensity of hazards and climatic extremes, social inequalities, and opportunities in engineering design for adaptation and mitigation, providing a survey approach to understanding major hazards and emerging engineering solutions.

Learning Objectives

  • Students will identify the scientific basis, geopolitical and historical drivers of global climate change within and between countries and populations.

  • Students will identify natural and built climatic hazards and solutions.听

  • Students will describe global climate resilience efforts, including present-day programs, frameworks, funding agencies, and implementations.听

  • Students will describe and critique technical interventions promoted to address or adapt to global climate change.听

  • Students will become familiar with basic statistical and geospatial data analytical tools for modeling hazards and infrastructure vulnerability.听

  • Students will become familiar with basic measurement design and deployment tools.

Course Organization听

听

Introduction

  1. Climate Change Science and Evidence Basics

  2. Modeling of Climatic Hazards in a Changing Climate

  3. EnRoads Global Climate Simulator

  4. Planetary Boundaries

  5. Global Economic and Health Inequalities

  6. Global Burden of Disease

  7. In-Situ and Remote Sensing Applications

  8. 50 Breakthroughs

Natural Environmental Hazard and Engineering Solution Identification

  1. Water Security

  2. Food Security

  3. Air Quality

Built Environmental Hazard and Engineering Solution Identification

  1. Relationship between Environmental Hazards and the Built Environment听

  2. Vulnerability and Risk for Housing and Buildings听

  3. Equitable and Sustainable Opportunities for Adaptation for Housing and Buildings听

  4. Vulnerability and Risk for Lifelines and Other Infrastructure

  5. 听Equitable and Sustainable Opportunities for Infrastructure Adaptation

Prerequisite听听

None

Course Materials

  • Neff, Jason, 鈥淎 Changing Planet鈥,听 - Chapter selections required

  • Hickel, Jason, "The Divide" - Required, PDF version provided through Canvas

  • , Science, 2023

  • , , Food Security, Our World In Data and associated citations

  • , Our World in Data

  • , Lancet Article Selection

  • National Climate Assessment听

  • A series of journal articles on statistical modeling of climatic hazards, remote sensing opportunities for modeling hazards and impacts on infrastructure, infrastructure vulnerability and risk,听 and climate adaptation solutions.

Grading

Letter grading