Joann Mossa
Department of Geography, CLAS
Extreme Floods
Extreme Floods is a new course proposed in the Department of Geography, examining floods from the geological past through present across the world. Learning objectives include: 1) understanding the physical causes of floods; 2) assessing how extreme floods are exacerbated by settlement choices, inadequate engineering, land use change, government secrecy, remoteness, and climate change, and comparing these in differing parts of the world; 3) learning about the costs of extreme floods in terms of lives, property, homelessness, and displacement, and comparing resilience, recovery and extreme engineering in differing parts of the world: 4) Examining how the problems caused by extreme floods go well beyond the water itself. They include the erosion done by water, damage from debris, delayed assistance, ensuing famines, the spread of disease due to poor drinking water, disrupted sanitation facilities, inadequate and dysfunctional medical care, water contamination, etc.
This grant will be used to assimilate more information on international flood events that have been poorly reported, especially in developing countries. Desired information includes archival photographs, video, scientific articles, hydrologic data, remote sensing images and books of various case studies outside the United States. Funding will primarily help in searching for remote sensing data to be used for the class and for graduate or undergraduate research projects. Exposing students to a range of case studies on extreme floods will help prepare them for jobs in emergency management, floodplain management and mapping, and international humanitarian assistance.