Online course: Financial strategies for managing the economic impacts of natural disasters

Course description:

The FINSTRAT or 'Financial Strategies for Managing the Economic Impacts of Natural Disasters' is a specialized distance learning course that focuses on the financial, economic and development impacts of disasters, and trade offs (costs and benefits) involved in disaster risk financing. It provides policy makers and disaster managers with tools and institutional designs for improved planning and budgeting processes, as well as national macroeconomic projections.

Course objectives:

The course aims to improve the participants’ understanding of:

• Main concepts of pro-active financial disaster risk management;
• Nature of economic losses and the ways disasters affect economic growth and ultimately economic development;
• Different coping mechanisms such as family, community and government assistance, and possible forms of insurance and risk transfer;
• When and how governments should insure critical infrastructure and other public assets;
• Methodologies that are available to explore what type of risk transfer instrument can be used to secure public assets;
• Selected national public-private insurance systems and other pre-disaster arrangements for providing post-disaster assistance to households and businesses.