Climate Change: Vulnerability, Impacts and Adaptation

Learning Outcomes

At the end of this module, students should be able to:

• Explain the main societal and infrastructure vulnerabilities and risks of climate change and the necessity for integrated assessment and response.
• Identify and explain adaptation (including engineering) responses to a range of hydro-climatic hazards for key areas.
• Understand the stages of at least two risk assessment frameworks and how they are used to develop climate adaptation plans to identified risks.
• Understand our responses in the context of national and international legislation and agreements.

At the end of this module, students should have achieved the following skills:

• Ability to assess the vulnerability of nations, cities, or systems (or infrastructure components) to climate change and likely impact. Interpret climate change projections from climate model ensemble output.
• Conduct a climate change risk assessment using established frameworks used for adaptation planning to assess, prioritise, and apply sustainable adaptation strategies in a range of settings.
• Ability to apply research methods.
• Ability to use open-source web-based tools and datasets for climate change and risk analysis.
• Present the outcome of a risk assessment in a well-researched, well-structured analytical report.
• Confidence and understanding to promote use of sustainable engineering approaches.

Course Agenda

You'll learn through a combination of:

• Lectures
• Asynchronous activities
• Practical sessions
• Academic skills activities
• Reading materials