Managing and Adapting to Climate

GR5403 Managing and Adapting to Climate

This course offers an exploration of the concepts, methods and tools required to analyze climate-related problems and craft solutions for reducing vulnerability and building resilience to climate variability and change.

Credit hours: 3

Semester: Fall

Instructors: Ben Orlove and Cathy Vaughan

Course Objective:

Drawing on the framework of risk analysis, the course examines and integrates risk assessment, risk perception, risk communication, and risk management. It provides an opportunity for students to learn about several forms of climate governance as well as the kinds of cultural and behavioral change that can be promoted by communication and education. Rather than focusing in a single discipline, the course spans both social and natural sciences. It also bridges a number of divides, including those between research and applications, between developed and developing countries, and between the temporal scales of climate variability and change.

Skills Developed:

• Understanding how to use climate information for risk assessment
• Risk management
• Understanding how issues of perception and communication can influence how risk is understood and acted upon
• Understanding information needs
• Conveying information to decision makers