Designing Educational Opportunities for the Hazard Manager of the 21st Century

Recognizing that traditional approaches to emergency/hazard management would not meet the challenge of minimizing disaster loss, the process of re-defining the role and skills of emergency/hazard managers began in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The terrorist events of September 11 and the response efforts since have only further emphasized the need to re-think the types of skills the hazard manager of the 21st century should possess. Hazard managers are now required to have a center of knowledge much beyond incident response and must have much stronger expertise in science, social science, and technology. Several disconnected efforts to establish emergency management higher education curriculum are already underway, but have not so far yielded a standardized direction based on the consensus of leading professionals.

The Natural Hazard Center at the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of Colorado at Denver in partner with the FEMA Higher Education Project are conducting a workshop to formulate a consensus on the skills needed by the hazard manger of the 21st century, to identify educational requirements, and to create a sample curriculum. There are approximately 35-45 participants attending the 2-3 day workshop in the Denver, Colorado area. The participants are from a wide-variety of academic disciplines, government agencies involved with hazard management, and areas of industry.

Workshop outcomes will provide guidance for the creation of educational programs across the U.S. in support of disaster reduction and would provide guidance for the development of educational opportunities. These outcomes will directly supports the changing nature of hazard management in the U.S. and will seek to create a professional image for the emergency/hazard management field.