The course will appraise Disaster management as a constituent of national security and a component of civil defense. Also, the course addresses in an integrated and synthetic way a range of issues including normative order of disaster management, creating priority inventories of disaster management vulnerability, resistance and redundancy as well as evaluation of scenarios and threat analysis with uncertain impact on reaching the goals of disaster management. The historical and empirical background of the role of disaster management, as well as the reasons behind civil society organization directed to assess and react to disasters, had a foundational correlation with the role of the civil defense, and the institutional approach to mitigation, management, contention and prevention of disasters.

This course will examine certain natural Disasters (drought, flood, hurricane, wildfire) and Climate Change as a critical contributing factor to them. It will discuss the causes and the consequences of the climate change and how it amplifies certain phenomena. Furthermore, it will assess the effect of these changes to the management of the aforementioned natural disasters. Climate change models and natural disaster prediction will be discussed as well as the byproducts of these natural disasters and the difficult of management (like coping with climate refugees).

Since the turn of the millennium, more than one million people have been killed and 2.3 billion others have been directly affected by natural disasters including wild fires around the world. In cases like the 2010 Haiti earthquake or the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, these disasters have time and time again wrecked large populations and national infrastructures. While recognizing that improved rescue, evacuation, and disease control are crucial to reducing the effects of natural disasters, in the final analysis, poverty remains the main risk factor determining the long-term impact of natural hazards. Furthermore, natural disasters have themselves a tremendous impact on the poorest of the poor, who are often ill-prepared to deal with natural hazards and for whom a hurricane, an earthquake, or a drought can mean a permanent submersion in poverty. This course is a study of the economics associated with international, national, state, or local level disaster. Students will study, analyze, and conduct research on the direct and indirect economic losses associated with disaster. The course will cover the economics associated with both public and private institutions, implementing the study of frameworks, protocols and standards used both, at the national level, as well as international institutions such as the World Bank, the Interamerican Development Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

This course will enable students to think critically about response and disaster recovery operations. Students will learn about the nature of emergencies and disasters and develop skills to assess alternate viewpoints about how practitioners should deal with them. Students will be encouraged to review disaster management literature and examine the various strategies and tools that can be utilized for effective disaster response. Through a survey of recovery policies and programs, this course also examines methods that can be utilized to promote a quick return to normalcy. In this sense, it also keeps the mitigation of future disasters in mind.

This course covers the pre-production planning and processes for completing the capstone graduate project. The students will follow the necessary steps in the production pipeline while identifying and refining their idea, concept and methodology.

Global Security and Strategic Studies students are required to take a three-credit hour course on the Capstone Graduation Project. To be graduated, students are requested not only to passing courses and earning required credits, but also, they need to show that they have developed proficiency in core-content knowledge and can demonstrate proficiency in applied learning skills in the four concentrations. It will be a challenging and rigorous journey but the reward for undertaking a meaningful experience are immense and will undoubtedly give AUE graduates a powerful start in career they may choose. In addition, English language and technology proficiency must also be demonstrated. The Capstone Graduation Projects should be in the form of field-based case studies. The Capstone Graduation Project is designed to give students a constructive working understanding of the requirements and expectations needed to graduate from AUE.