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UCL IRDR newsletter – May 2020
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Cascading consequences of Covid-19

A week after the last IRDR Newsletter in January, the Chinese government confirmed person-to-person transmission of Covid-19, which triggered an accelerating sequence of events on the way to global lockdown.
ultrastructural morphology exhibited by coronaviruses.  Credit: CDC/ Alissa Eckert, MS; Dan Higgins, MAMS

Image: Ultrastructural morphology exhibited by coronaviruses. (Credit: CDC/ Alissa Eckert, MS; Dan Higgins, MAMS)

On 4th March, I held a meeting with IRDR staff to alert them that UCL would close and since then it has been pretty much flat out as UCL moved to online teaching. Our priorities have been keeping staff and students informed and connected, student safety, moving teaching and assessment online, re-orienting research projects impacted by travel bans and lab closures. This has required a huge effort from academic and professional staff and it has been a tremendous achievement that this has been done smoothly but without affecting academic standards. Particular thanks must go to the IRDR Director of Studies, Dr Robert Wicks, who has led the teaching response. We have maintained social engagement running our weekly IRDR Coffee, Masters Tea and Discussion Forums online. While we have kept up our increasing tempo of research, for instance holding the IRDR Spring Academy and the global inception meeting for the GRRIPP project (Gender Responsive Resilience and Intersectionality in Policy and Practice) successfully online. IRDR staff have given advice to UCL, London Resilience, WHO etc. and been active across broadcast and social media in the UK and internationally. Professor David Alexander had led our research response through the UCL-IRDR Covid-19 Observatory which has released a new working paper that examines how emergency planning scenarios can be used to prepare for viral pandemics. For research, teaching and learning in 2020-21 we have established Business Continuity Planning teams to ensure the IRDR is prepared for a range of scenarios. More information will be available from UCL following guidance from the UK government.
 
The IRDR 10th Annual Conference on 15 July will focus on the Covid-19 pandemic. You are most welcome to join this day of thought-provoking talks and discussions where our in-house and guest experts will interrogate how the pandemic is disproportionately impacting vulnerable communities and the changes necessary in crisis management strategies to prepare for the next one.
 
Careers
We believe there will continue to be strong demand for our graduates. Our masters programmes uniquely offer in-demand subjects such as Digital Health: Epidemics and Emergencies in the Era of Big Data and Business Continuity and Organisational Resilience. We are supporting our current students’ career prospects with the IRDR Alumni-Student Mixer moving to 1 July. We are putting past Humanitarian Masterclasses in 'Earth Observation and Natural Hazards’ and ‘Safer Schools’ online, so that students can increase their practical skills in new areas. And we welcome IRDR Alumni and Members who wish to support our current students through mentoring and help to make global connections. If you can help, please email irdr-comms@ucl.ac.uk.
 
New BSc
But in this difficult period the IRDR has reached a significant milestone. UCL Council has established the IRDR as a formal academic department. We are the only academic department of risk, resilience and disaster management in the UK. We have also started promoting our new BSc Global Humanitarian Studies, which will start in September 2021. Our very first open day (virtual, of course!) attracted over 100 participants. Full details of the programme are available in the UCL online prospectus. We will formally launch the BSc programme at the UCL Humanitarian Summit on 9 July and hold a Taster Course on 17 July (online, of course). Applications are open through UCAS on 8 September 2020.
 
New IRDR academic appointments 
We are delighted that Dr Punam Yadav and Dr Jessica Field have both accepted offers of IRDR lecturer positions in Humanitarian Studies starting in June 2020. Punam has a PhD in Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of Sydney, an MSc in Gender and Development Studies from AIT, Thailand and an MEd. in Mathematics from Tribhuvan University, Nepal. She was a Senior Research Fellow in the LSE Centre for Women, Peace and Security, before joining us at UCL as Senior Research Fellow and then Co-Director of the IRDR Centre for Gender and Disaster. Previously, she had been Field Officer at the Centre for Research on Environment, Health and Population Activities, Nepal. Jessica has a PhD in Humanities, an MA in Humanitarianism and Conflict Response, and BA in History, all from the University of Manchester. She was Lecturer in Global Challenges at Brunel University London and Associate Professor in International Affairs at O.P. Jindal Global University, India. Previously she had been Humanitarian Affairs Adviser at Save the Children and Social Policy Researcher, International Development for the Scottish Government. We are delighted to welcome such talented academics to the IRDR.

We also welcome Aisha Aldosery as a new PhD student in the IRDR Centre for digital Public Health in Emergencies and the re-appointment of Dr Robert Muir-Wood, Chief Research Officer at Risk Management Solutions (RMS).

So we are going to come out the other side of the coronavirus crisis a strengthened department with a mission to develop the IRDR, themed around disaster resilience, cascading crises, natural hazards, humanitarian crisis response, conflict and migration, climate change adaptation, health emergencies, and gender responsive resilience, in order to connect education, research, innovation and enterprise for the long-term benefit of humanity. There is so much work to be done. We welcome you to join us.

Peter Sammonds
Director, UCL Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction
News
SARS-CoV-2, courtesy of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,   Bethesda, Maryland (Wikimedia Commons).
Emergency planning scenarios for viral pandemics

The UCL-IRDR Covid-19 Observatory has released a new working paper that examines how emergency planning scenarios can be used to prepare for viral pandemics, and comments are invited. 

Download the paper
Man and woman wearing surgical masks in street
IRDR coronavirus expertise in demand

From blogs and podcasts to interviews on global news channels, IRDR academics are providing expert commentary on all aspects of the current Covid-19 pandemic, and its impact on other areas of emergency planning.

Read more about IRDR in the media
Children in a metal building in the Philippines
New undergraduate programme recruiting now

Our new Global Humanitarian Studies BSc is now open for applications for 2021/2 entry. This unique multidisciplinary programme will train future generations of humanitarian leaders in the theory and practice of humanitarian action.

Find out more about the programme
Woman's hand holding a mobile phone
#MyLockdownJournal: What are we doing during COVID-19 lockdown?

Researchers from the UCL IRDR Centre for Digital Public Health in Emergencies are leading several projects to explore how people are spending their time during the COVID-19 lockdown.

Read more about the projects
Events
A ship in the arctic with melting ice
UCL Humanitarian Summit: Climate and Covid-19 Humanitarian Crises and Launch of new UCL BSc
9 July, 10am–3pm

Climate change and the Covid-19 pandemic are also humanitarian crises. Join us in a one-day meeting to interrogate these crises from a humanitarian viewpoint.

Find out more and book tickets
Refugee camp
UCL IRDR 10th Annual Conference: COVID-19 Pandemic – a global perspective
15 July, 10am–5pm

Viewed from around the world, how is the Covid-19 pandemic impacting women, minorities, refugees, migrants and vulnerable communities?

Find out more and book tickets
Three students chatting outside
IRDR Student–Alumni Mixer
1 July, 6.30–8.30pm

We welcome our past students back to UCL at this invitation-only online event, which provides an opportunity for our staff and students to meet and network with our alumni. Invitations to alumni will be sent shortly or you can register your interest at IRDR-Comms@ucl.ac.uk
Male and female student looking at a document
Global Humanitarian Studies BSc Taster Course
17 July, 2–5pm

Are you considering a future in the humanitarian sector, making a real difference to communities around the world? Join our online taster course to find out more about the subject and studying on the Global Humanitarian Studies BSc.

Book your place
Research funding awards

As well as acting as a reviewer for the Horizon 2020 funding call, Gianluca Pescarioli has himself won two awards. Firstly, a UCL–Tohoku Strategic Partnership Funds 2020/21 for 'Continuity Management of Health Data during Cascading Disasters'. Principal Investigator: Gianluca Pescaroli. Partners: International Research Institute of Disaster Science, Tohoku University.

Secondly, consultancy for the Greater London Authority in Partnership with Arup (leading partner and Principal Investigator: Savina Carluccio). Title: Improved decision-making for infrastructure resilience in London. 

Patty Kostkova and the Centre for Digital Public Health in Emergencies won a £100,000 ESPRC IAA grant for localisation of the GADSA gamified app for the NHS to improve antibiotic prescribing in surgeons. 
 
They are also launching the My Lockdown Journal project – a coronavirus-related survey and app – and are seeking funding for this initiative.
Student news
We welcome new PhD student Aisha Aldosery to the IRDR. Aisha's research will consider an IoT-based surveillance system to control the outbreak of mosquito-borne diseases using a case study of ZIKA in Brazil.
Staff spotlight
Dr Punam Yadav

Dr Punam Yadav is Co-director of the IRDR Centre for Gender and Disaster and leads an MSc course on Gender, Disaster and Conflict, which reflect her interests in women's reproductive health and rights, women, peace and security and the impacts of conflict on women including sexual violence. Punam has worldwide connections and research interests and is General Secretary of the Britain-Nepal Academic Council (BNAC).

Punam is Co-Investigator and Global Coordinator for the GRRIPP project – Gender Responsive Resilience and Intersectionality in Policy and Practice. This is a networking partnership for increasing resilience supported by a £5 million UKRI Collective Fund award (Twitter: @GRRIPP).

Punam joined the IRDR in April 2018, prior to which she was a senior research fellow at the London School of Economics and Politics Science. She has worked with various international and local humanitarian organisations.

“I am interested in examining the impacts of conflict and disaster on peoples’ lives and their gendered characters. The uniqueness of my research is that I am interested in examining not only the negative impacts of conflicts but also their transformative effects. My forthcoming article entitled, ‘Can women benefit from war? Women’s agency in conflict and post-conflict societies’, examines the transformative effects of war on women in Nepal”.

From June, Punam will be starting as Lecturer in Humanitarian Studies and lead the new Global Humanitarian Studies BSc programme.

See Dr Punam Yadav's full profile
IRDR in the news
IRDR commentators continue to appear regularly in the media, offering their expertise and opinions on a wide range of issues. Here are some recent examples of our staff in the spotlight. 

In the wake of Sky One's drama COBRA, Robert Wicks and Ilan Kelman appeared on Sky News to talk about the potential damage to power structures during extreme space weather events.

Following devastation from storms Ciara and Dennis at the start of the year, Gianluca Pescaroli appeared on Sky Breakfast News to explain how putting people in areas that are known to be at risk from flooding is exacerbating vulnerabilities. Recently, he also talked to Huffington Post about what could happen if the coronavirus lockdown was lifted.  

Patty Kostkova appeared in Knowable Magazine discussing how social media and online searches can hold clues about pandemic spread and how digital tools are being used to track pandemics.  

David Alexander has appeared frequently across a wide range of channels as a commentator on emergency preparedness, pandemics and Covid-19. These include UK and international newspapers, such as the Guardian and The Independent; live television news channels, including the BBC and Al-Jazeera; and numerous podcasts and interviews, including EU Confidential and, most recently, UCL's Coronavirus – the Whole Story

As well as commentaries on a number of news channels, Ilan Kelman took part in a think tank on civilisation resilience post-Covid and presented a COV360 video on the impacts of lockdown. He also participated in podcasts including Crisis as opportunity: China and coronavirus diplomacy in the Arctic, Risks to Arctic Communities from the Coronavirus, and Disasters, Health, and Islands.

You can see more examples of IRDR media appearances on our website.
IRDR blog
Get a taste of the wide-ranging work, thoughts and opinions of IRDR staff and students, in our blog. Here are the most recent posts:
Recent publications
Ilan Kelman edited a special issue of the International Journal of Disaster Risk Science on 'Five Years of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction', which was published in April.

The issue included a commentary from the current head of the United Nations Office for Disaster Risk Reduction, Mami Mizutori, who spoke at an IRDR special seminar in January. All articles are free to download from the Springer website


Ilan also wrote an open access article 
'COVID‐19: what is the disaster?' for a special section in Social Anthropology.
Punam Yadav, from the IRDR Centre for Gender and Disaster, co-authored a paper 'Gender and New Wars' as part of a special issue in Stability: International Journal of Security and Development.
The paper, which introduced the special collection, outlines the main features of new wars and discusses some of the conceptual thinking around gender in the context of new wars and how it relates to international frameworks, such as UN Security Council resolutions on Women, Peace and Security.

Punam has also had three more articles accepted for publication this year.
David Alexander's 2002 book Principles of Emergency Planning and Management has been translated into Arabic and published in Egypt (Alexandria), while his 2016 book How to Write an Emergency Plan is being translated into Chinese and published in Beijing by China Meteorological Press.

See more of David Alexander's publications
About the IRDR
The Institute for Risk and Disaster Reduction (IRDR) leads research, advanced teaching, policy engagement and knowledge exchange with industry and humanitarian agencies, in risk and disaster reduction across UCL. We welcome new members, who can access a number of benefits, including member-only events.

Find out more about the IRDR and how to join.
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