Educational Material

KULTURisk Methodology in Matlab

KULTURISK Methodology for the demonstration of the benefits of risk prevention was designed and successfully tested on a few European case studies with varying socio-economical, physical and hazard characteristics. Knowledge and
experience emanating from application of the methodology was used to design a tutorial to give students insight and understanding of the methodology. This tutorial was elaborated by UNESCO-IHE as part of a programming language course in MATLAB (MathWorks, 2004). The exercise includes the following:

• Debugging a piece of MATLAB code
• Manipulation and operations involving matrices
• Input-output operations 
• Writing and use of anonymous functions (and the use of normal functions)
• Basic implementation of interactive MATLAB content
• MATLAB operations, writing equations in code
• Use of Boolean operators
• Slicing of matrices

To achieve the stated objectives it was designed as Risk Assessment of a 'pseudo case study' taking into account a Physical risk and Economic assessment.


Training Exercises in Flood modelling

A series of computer-based exercises are available to download, designed for independent learning. They have been written as part of the KULTURisk project, by our partner Bristol University. Aimed at undergraduate level and above, they introduce users to numerical flood modelling using both hypothetical and real-life data, and then use the results to create risk maps, estimate uncertainty and look at flood prevention measures.

Some exercises require LISFLOOD-FP. Others provide instructions for Excel, MatLab or ArcMap. However, if you don’t have these or are more confident using other software, calculations are generally simple and other programs could be used.

Exercise 1: Introduction to 2D numerical flood modelling
Exercise 2: Flood inundation modelling from a river channel
Exercise 3: Flood hazard risk mapping
Exercise 4: Probabilistic hazard mapping and uncertainty
Exercise 5: Simulating and evaluating flood prevention measures

Material is available to download at the School of Geographical Sciences

Summer School: Flood risk reduction: perception, communication, governance

This Summer School will introduce various approaches to risk prevention and management and highlight the importance of measures, risk perception and communication to risk governance and the existing international initiatives and policies in disaster risk reduction. These concepts will be analysed in the context of water-related hazards such as floods and landslides occurring in coastal areas, mountainous catchments, transboundary large rivers and urban settings, with the understanding that given the multi-hazard approach required in disaster risk reduction, they may be applicable to other natural hazards. 

Learning objectives 
Upon completion of the summer school, the participants will be able to: 
  • identify the main components of risk reduction 
  • identify different risk reduction measures and understand their advantages and disadvantages 
  • analyse the implications of risk perception of different stakeholders 
  • explain the meaning and purpose of risk communication 
Course material
Dr. Sálvano Briceño (ICSU/IRDR, retired, UNISDR)  - International policies in risk reduction (PDF)
Prof. David Demeritt (King’s College, London) - Risk, Risk Governance, and Governing through Risk (PDF)
Dr. Matthias Buchecker (Swiss Federal Research Institute, Zurich) - Risk Perception and Risk Communication (PDF)
Dr. Giuliano Di Baldassarre (UNESCO-IHE Institute for Water Education, Delft) - Flood Risk Prevention - KULTURisk (PDF)

Laboratory for a culture of risk prevention in primary schools (in Italian)

Material presented at the Scuola Primaria Sacra Famiglia, Trento.
Contributors A. Sole and F. Caporali authorised the publication. This material can be used for training purposes but do not print photography material without authorisation of the copyright owners (last slide).



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