In many parts of the world, disaster management is a multi-disciplinary task involving input from different organizations. The mitigation of natural hazards required the sharing of knowledge and the data to devise a sound and pragmatic natural hazard management strategy.  Besides having, advantages that various backgrounds are involved in analyzing a single problem, it also leads to diffusion of knowledge and responsibilities. Knowledge on various terrains, also other than the own knowledge field, is necessary to have an overview of how to deal with a natural hazards from different perspectives. In practice, fragmentation of tasks and responsibilities leads often to misunderstanding and the management of the disaster is very poor. From the perspective of the user, data integration and modeling of various geo-scientific data should supply planners and decision-makers with adequate and understandable information within a relatively short period.

The needs of the civil society with an up-to-date and real time information on dynamic geoscience processes is slowly been appreciated. The course foreseen will provide both a technological base as well as an institutional re-focusing for these modern approaches.

Target group Specifically the course is intended for the following persons:

  • NFP alumni from Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, China, Bangladesh, Tadzikistan, Kyrgyzstan who studied in the fields Geoinformatics, Geo-information Management, Urban Planning and Land Administration, Earth Resources and Environmental Geosciences, and Applied Earth Sciences
  • Their colleagues from government organizations and NGO’s responsible for disaster management related to earthquake hazards in the Himalayan region.
What will be achieved? The course centres on the contribution of earth science spatial information in the process of earthquake risk management. The objectives of the course are:


  1. to communicate the current state of the art in geodynamics and seismology, earth observation, geo­engineering, geophysics, GIS modelling and decision support for earthquake hazard assessment
  2. to strengthen the knowledge and skills of earth scientists from in the use of spatial information for earthquake hazard assessment
  3. to improve understanding of the role and responsibilities of the various stakeholders in earthquake disaster risk management and to discuss the various methods for earthquake hazard and risk assessment and earthquake vulnerability reduction
  4. to demonstrate to the participants the design and set-up of a disaster management information system.
Course content Specific course topics in chronological order that will be treated include:

Week 1: Conceptualization of Himalayan geology, geodynamics and earthquakes, macro seismic hazard and the role of remote sensing

  • Introduction to the course (½ day)
  • Himalayan Geology and Geodynamics (1½ day)
  • Recent developments in remote sensing to earthquake risk management (1½ day)
  • RADAR (SAR) and interferometric SAR (InSAR) for ground motion detection and monitoring (½ day)
  • Macro-seismic hazard analysis (1 day)

Weekend: excursion and site visits (2 days)

Week 2: Micro-seismic hazard and site investigations, sustainable use of geo-information for hazard and risk assesment and earthquake vulnerability reducation measures

  • Regional seismic hazard techniques (1 days)
  • Local site investigations applying shallow subsurface geophysics and engineering (1 day)
  • Earthquake risk management and data requirements (1 day)
  • Social vulnerability and social inclusion in earthquake vulnerability reduction measures (1 day)
  • Two-Day Seminar on Earthquake Hazards Pakistan: Post-October 08, 2005 Muzafarabad Earthquake Scenario (2 days)
  • Conclusions and evaluation

 


 
     
National Centre of Excellence in Geology,
University of Peshawar, Peshawar-25120
Khyber Pakhtunkhawa., Pakistan.
Phone: +92-91-9216427, 9216429
Fax: +92-91-9218183