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Emergency Management: Risk, Incidents and Leadership

An introduction to managing risk and providing leadership during emergency incidents.

5,151 enrolled on this course

  • Duration

    2 weeks
  • Weekly study

    3 hours
This course is part of the program Risk, Incidents and Leadership, which is one of the building blocks that leads to a degree in MSc Emergency Management and Resilience and MSc Disaster Management and Resilience. Find out more.

Emergency managers understand the importance of managing risks during dynamic incidents.

This online course will provide you with an introduction to the concepts, issues, processes and structures relevant to the management of risk during the emergency phase of an incident. This will include an examination of the relationship between formal risk management and command systems and leadership, including a look at the complex world of decision-making.

What topics will you cover?

  • Risk management and incident command systems
  • The incident timeline
  • Incident review and debrief processes
  • Leadership
  • Decision-making and situational awareness

Learning on this course

On every step of the course you can meet other learners, share your ideas and join in with active discussions in the comments.

What will you achieve?

By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...

  • Evaluate the relationship between leadership and followership
  • Explain what factors influence risk and why risk management is important to the incident manager
  • Describe how people make decisions and how leadership and followership influence decision-making processes
  • Explore why emergency incidents go wrong and why good situational awareness is so important in preventing disasters
  • Describe various incident command systems
  • Describe leadership in the context of emergency incidents

Who is the course for?

This course is for any emergency management practitioners operating at or aiming to operate in the future at tactical or strategic level, in any discipline and in any country. It will introduce the key concepts and provide a look forward to an online MSc degree available on FutureLearn.

Please note that the individuals detailed in the ‘Who will you learn with?’ section below, are current staff members and may be subject to change.

Who will you learn with?

An Emergency Planner, specialising in crowd safety. Course Director for the MSc degrees in Emergency Management & Resilience, Disaster Management & Resilience, and Crowded Places & Public Safety.

Who developed the course?

Coventry University

Coventry secured 5 QS Stars for Teaching and Online Learning in the QS World University Ranking 2020 and has received No. 1 in the world for Massive Open Online Courses in MoocLab’s World University Ranking 2021.

  • Established

    1992
  • Location

    Coventry

Learning on FutureLearn

Your learning, your rules

  • Courses are split into weeks, activities, and steps to help you keep track of your learning
  • Learn through a mix of bite-sized videos, long- and short-form articles, audio, and practical activities
  • Stay motivated by using the Progress page to keep track of your step completion and assessment scores

Join a global classroom

  • Experience the power of social learning, and get inspired by an international network of learners
  • Share ideas with your peers and course educators on every step of the course
  • Join the conversation by reading, @ing, liking, bookmarking, and replying to comments from others

Map your progress

  • As you work through the course, use notifications and the Progress page to guide your learning
  • Whenever you’re ready, mark each step as complete, you’re in control
  • Complete 90% of course steps and all of the assessments to earn your certificate

Want to know more about learning on FutureLearn? Using FutureLearn

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Advance your career with a degree

Since 2017 you have been able to take a degree on FutureLearn. This free course is a bit like a starter course for a degree — it should give you a flavour of the degree subject but can also be your first step towards a degree qualification.

If you enjoy this course you can apply to join the program it’s part of to start working towards a degree on FutureLearn.

Don’t worry, you can still take the course without doing a full degree!

Do the free course
Join and complete the program
Get academic credit for an online degree from Coventry University
This course is part of the program Risk, Incidents and Leadership, which is one of the building blocks that leads to a degree in MSc Emergency Management and Resilience and MSc Disaster Management and Resilience.

Do you know someone who'd love this course? Tell them about it...

You can use the hashtag #FLincident to talk about this course on social media.