GEO4350 – Environmental Hazards and Risk Analysis
Course description
Course content
The course treats environmental catastrophes in general and natural disasters specifically as extreme precipitation, floods, low flow and drought, earthquakes, slides, debris avalanches and tsunamis. Man-made induced disasters as slides and rockfall from unstable slopes, as well as pollution of soils, surface water and ground water, are also treated. The course serves as an introduction to methods derived from probability theory and statistics, treating environmental disasters as a frequency analysis of rare occurrences. The moment of uncertainty is evaluated together with measures of certainty and the risk concept.
Learning outcome
To be capable of understanding the basic processes leading to environmental catastrophes and the basic concepts in risk analysis. You should be able to propose methods to reduce the risk related to those disasters.
Admission
Students who are admitted to study programmes at UiO must each semester register which courses and exams they wish to sign up for in Studentweb.
If you are not already enrolled as a student at UiO, please see our information about admission requirements and procedures.
Prerequisites
Recommended previous knowledge
Introductory courses in mathematics and statistics, like
MAT1000 – Mathematics for applications I (discontinued) and STK1000 – Introduction to Applied Statistics
Overlapping courses
5 credits aginst GEO4161 - Contaminants in the geoenvironment
Teaching
Lectures (4 hrs) and seminars/ colloquia (6 hrs) weekly during 10 weeks. Everybody is expected to participate in the seminars/ colloquia and make oral presentation of minimum one assignment.
Examination
Three midterm, written exams (each counting 20%) and a final oral exam (40%). A passing grade for each midterm exam is required before you can take the final exam.
In this course exam papers are only written in English.
Grading scale
Grades are awarded on a scale from A to F, where A is the best grade and F is a fail. Read more about the grading system.
External auditor: Stein Bondevik
Explanations and appeals
Resit an examination
Students who can document a valid reason for absence from the regular examination are offered a postponed examination at the beginning of the next semester.
Re-scheduled examinations are not offered to students who withdraw during, or did not pass the original examination.
Withdrawal from an examination
It is possible to take the exam up to 3 times. If you withdraw from the exam after the deadline or during the exam, this will be counted as an examination attempt.