Objective: To document & discuss any hazardous event or disaster that occurs during THIS semester, using the Hazards Blog Page (http://hazards.umwblogs.org/); to have students pay attention to current events and specifically hazardous events.

Grading: To get all 10%, you must post/comment/ask/answer/discuss at least 10 times during the semester, before the deadline of April 20th. I will record grades about Feb 24 and March 24 so you can monitor your progress.

What? A post may be a personal comment (must relate to SOMETHING to do with class or to do with a previous post) or new information from a news organization. You need to state the source and provide a link to the information; you also need to summarize the information (i.e. don’t say: Look at what happened in Brazil! & provide a link). I will grade for quality – so a simple question won’t count the same as an in-depth discussion of how a consequential event occurred… but ‘simple’ posts still count, and you may post more of them to gain points…

In the event that there are few new disasters this spring, I will post some older material and ask questions for your responses.

Suggestions:

• Post original information (can be multiple postings by different students, from a variety of sources – but it must keep adding new information) from news media – summarize and link.
• Post updates to the information, later in time
• Post analyses and comments by media/experts
• Ask questions about the cause of the disaster, about human responses to it
• Answer questions: point out answers within media articles, or within the text, or suggest your own answers
• Explain how the disaster fits in our model of response & mitigation
• Explore prospective responses to future similar hazards in this location

If you want to get started, look at the old posts!