Whole-Community Disaster Preparedness

Catalog description

Whole-community disaster preparedness describes a fairly wide range of issues of relevance to the homeland security mission space that essentially encompasses aspects of emergency management, such as "ensuring resilience to disasters" as one of the core missions of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) - since after 9/11 and the creation of DHS, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) came under the roof of DHS, forming one of its so-called department components. Academically and professionally, disaster psychology contributes an important perspective to emergency management within an all-hazards and a whole-of-community approach to homeland security: Based on a general civil security perspective, it addresses the way people perceive and experience disasters, the way they react to them, and the way they recover from them. Within this context, the course explores the psychological impact of disasters and terrorist attacks on victims, families, rescuers, and society and methods of reducing negative psychological effects. Topics covered include the perception and communication of risk, psychological effects of traumatic events, and psychological interventions to reduce harmful psychological effects of disasters.