Multidisciplinary Teaching in Natural Hazards from Formation to Physical and Social Impacts

Understanding of natural hazards for mitigation, preparedness, modeling, and research purposes, at the community level, involves meteorological, engineering, AND social science knowledge. Models intended to predict physical damage are reliant on the meteorological forecast, and the social consequences are dependent on our physical infrastructure. Additionally, building codes for wind loads are primarily created by engineers, while damage assessments for classifying windstorms and providing EF rankings are executed by meteorologists, and both have implications for the public. To move both research and industry forward, we need to start considering how to teach these subjects across the disciplines. This presentation will outline a graduate-level course designed to reach meteorologists, engineers, and social scientists (among others) and illustrate how each of their disciplines connect as well as provide each with some basic background on the areas outside of their discipline. For example, an engineer in this course would learn basics of synoptic and mesoscale meteorology before moving on to discuss wind loads. This presentation will cover the general course structure, samples from each subject area, and general observations from teaching this course at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.