Cost Benefit Analysis in Disaster Risk Reduction Course
The Disaster Risk Reduction Program Florida International University (FIU), with support from the U.S. Agency for International Development’s Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance (USAID), has developed a course for higher education on Cost Benefit Analysis of Disaster Risk Reduction (CBA-DRR). This course is intended for graduate (M.A., M.S. or Ph.D.) students from a wide range of disciplines. It is designed as an online, non-credit course taught over a period of 15 weeks.
The CBA-DRR course focuses on the basic principles of DRR and CBA and how these can be integrated to assess vulnerabilities and value risks and proactive investments for communities and countries. Without tools such as CBA, it is difficult to decide which hazards pose the greatest costs, and conversely, which proactive investments and policies provide the most benefits and probabilities of success. Application of such tools in the context of a broader DRR strategy increases the chances that the impacts of such hazards as earthquakes, tsunamis, hurricanes, landslides, and other extremes will be less dangerous, less disruptive, and less debilitating. The course is intended to better equip participants to address DRR issues in their respective areas of influence, so that in the future, fewer people are affected by the adverse impacts of hazards.
This course will provide an understanding and knowledge of the skills required to produce, interpret, and explain DRR in CBA within a development framework for policy and decision-makers. It will not train the students in econometrics or other quantitative skills requiring programming skills.
