With regard to increasing natural hazards, such as floods and earthquakes, innovative, sustainable and resilient solutions are needed to strengthen the adaptability of socio-technical systems and infrastructures. In order to develop such solutions, students need skills that enable them to deal with uncertainty and complexity as future “change agents”. Co-operative and interdisciplinary approaches and skills are still essential for this. This course therefore aims to sensitise students to dealing with natural hazards from their respective specialist perspectives.

By presenting theoretical concepts and fundamentals from the fields of risk research and disaster management, among others, students will gain an insight into current scientific and interdisciplinary discourses. Building on this, a crisis-specific case is worked on in multidisciplinary teams with a focus on “learning from failure” with regard to various failure and adaptation mechanisms and creative solutions are developed.

With regard to increasing natural hazards, such as floods and earthquakes, innovative, sustainable and resilient approaches to solutions are required that strengthen the adaptability of socio-technical systems and infrastructures. In order to develop such approaches, competencies are necessary that enable students as future “change agents” to deal with uncertainty and complexity. This requires cooperative and interdisciplinary approaches and skills. Therefore, this course aims to sensitise students to dealing with natural hazards from their respective disciplinary perspectives.

By presenting theoretical concepts and foundations from the fields of risk research and disaster management, among others, students will gain an insight into current scientific and interdisciplinary discourses. Based on this, they will work in multidisciplinary teams on a crisis-specific case study with a focus on “learning from failure” regarding various failure and adaptation mechanisms in order to develop creative solutions.