The consequences of natural disasters on economic activities, property, human welfare and natural resources can be devastating. These events greatly affect the productive sectors of the economy, not to mention the impacts on communities, in particular, the poor.
With increasing frequency, countries face situations in which scarce resources that were earmarked to development projects have to be diverted to relief and reconstruction. A recent World Bank Study on Jamaica, Dominican Republic and OECS countries confirms that long-term economic growth recovers slowly after major natural disasters. Disasters directly impact the foreign exchange earnings capacity of countries, at a time when extra resources are needed to finance the necessary imports of food, energy and factors of production. If sustainable development is to be achieved, countries will have to take effective measures to manage natural hazard risks.
 
The course is based on the Handbook developed by the UN Economic Commission for Latin America and Caribbean. It incorporates both the conceptual and methodological aspects of measuring the damage caused by disasters to capital stocks, losses in the flows of goods and services, and temporary effects on the main macroeconomic variables. The presented methodology can be also used to estimate whether there is a sufficient domestic capacity for dealing with reconstruction tasks, or whether international cooperation is required.

Language
The language of the course is Turkish.
 
Course Format
The course consists of self-paced modules, discussion forums, exercises, readings, case studies, tests and learning via interaction with program faculty and peers. The course includes 6 audio sessions of expert lectures for 30–35 minutes each.
 
Course Expectations
Participants are expected to commit 8–10 hours per week in order to gain the most out of this course in addition to:

• Complete the required reading assignments
• Participate in all online activities. Participation involves posting a minimum of two messages per week that are substantive in nature. The message can be either a new topic or a reply to someone else's message.
• Participants are encouraged to post more often than twice a week in order to be involved more deeply into topics.
• Participate in videoconferencing and asynchronous chat sessions (if applicable)
• Complete assignments and end of course project
• Complete course evaluation at the end of the course
  

System Requirements of the Course

• Hardware: Pentium 166 or faster, 64Mb Memory, CD-ROM, Sound Card
• Software: Windows 95,98,ME,NT 4,2000 or XP Internet Explorer 4 or higher, Netscape 4 or higher Microsoft Office 2000 (Word, PowerPoint) Acrobat Reader 5  

Damage and Reconstruction Needs Assessment course is designed for staff of government agencies, both central and local, and representatives of international aid agencies dealing with natural disaster management and disaster relief and reconstruction activities. The course aims at enhancing participants’ understanding and capacity in assessing the social, economic and environmental effects of natural disasters. It reviews methodologies and instruments used to quantify direct damages and indirect losses and the overall macroeconomic consequences of catastrophic events, in order to determine the damages and the reconstruction needs.  

Course Overview
Disasters have a major impact on the living conditions, economic performance, and environmental assets of affected countries. Consequences may be long-term and may cause irreversible damages to environmental, economic and social structures.
Statistics show that disasters cause the most significant and irreversible damage in developing countries, where the poorest and most vulnerable population groups are disproportionately impacted. By contrast, in the developed world, a considerable degree of protection against disasters has been achieved, as a result of effective prevention, mitigation and planning measures that reduce vulnerability. But even with these impressive results, damages in these countries have risen due to greater concentration and value of societal activities.

To reduce the long-term impact of disasters, and to achieve sustainable growth, affected countries must (i) assign financial resources for prevention and mitigation of the foreseeable impact of disasters, and (ii) ensure that once disasters occur, reconstruction investments incorporate vulnerability-reduction measures. This latter point should be underscored in light of reconstruction efforts undertaken by many countries. In most cases, we observe that vulnerability is reconstructed along with destroyed assets, mainly because of scarce resources available beyond the emergency and humanitarian assistance stage. 

This course offers a set of diagnostic tools to measure the type and extent of damage and losses caused by a specific disaster. It can be used immediately after the emergency stage to assess the direct and indirect effects of a catastrophic event, and its implications for the social well-being and economic performance of the affected area. This comprehensive methodology covers the broad range of effects and their cross implications for the economic and social sectors, physical infrastructure, and environmental assets. Based on its estimates, it is possible to determine the reconstruction requirements and identify appropriate reconstruction programs and projects.

This specialization course targets central government policymakers, representatives of donor agencies and disaster management professionals. The course consists of two modules and an end of course exercise.

• Module 1: Global Perspective
  
• Module 2: Turkey’s Perspective
  
• End of Course Project
  
  To meet the course completion requirement the participants are required to submit an end-of course case study/project. The goal of the project is to forecast the impacts of natural disasters with theoretical and real examples. The participants will use the ECLAC theory explained in the course and the basic knowledge to estimate the impacts of a drought in a Central American city.   
  

WBI is pleased to offer this training series as a result of partnerships with the Middle East Technical University, Istanbul Technical University, Bosphorus University and Gazi University.