Geography Taught Masters

MSc Environmental Hazards & Risk

Our postgraduate courses share an interdisciplinary foundation in risk and vulnerability. Our different degree programmes deepen students’ understanding of the risks emerging from anthropogenic climate change, hazards and political responses to disruption.

Our MSc in Environmental Hazards and Risks explores the causes and devastating impacts of natural events including earthquakes, floods, drought, heatwaves, landslides and climate change and the threat they pose to environments and populations around the world.

Taking a natural sciences approach, you will develop an in-depth knowledge of these global environmental hazards, and consider the extent of their physical and social impact on society, the consequences for social vulnerability and for resilience. The course is likely to appeal to those with a background in natural sciences or engineering.

MSc Course

This pathway provides specialised scientific training in environmental hazards. Students will receive theoretical and practical training for understanding, quantifying and/or critically evaluating environmental hazards and the relationship of these with issues of vulnerability and resilience.

You will learn about how environmental hazards and risks persist over long periods of time instead of merely as single events, and are made up of both natural processes as well as socio-economic dynamics. The pathway is available for both MA and MSc students. Its main modules are ‘Spatial and Temporal Dimensions of Hazards’ and ‘Hydro-meteorological Hazards’.

MSc Modules

• Spatial and Temporal Dimensions of Hazards
• Hydro-meteorological Hazards
• Risk, Science & Communication
• Understanding Risk
• Risk Frontiers
• Research or Vocational Dissertation Project

What our students say: Tinwai Cheung, MSc in Risk

Be social. Be informed. Be a part of Durham Geography.