Establishing a Social Research Infrastructure for Hazards and Disaster Studies – Alberta, Canada

Establishing a Social Research Infrastructure for Hazards and Disaster Studies in Canada, funded by the Canada Research Chairs Program (Award # CRC-2020-00128). This project aims to comprehensively asset map the existing hazards and disaster scholars, educational courses, modules, and programs at designated post-secondary education organizations in Alberta, Canada (https://www.alberta.ca/designated-post-secondary-institutions-alberta.aspx). Accordingly, data were collected from the official institution websites of twelve publicly funded universities, thirteen publicly funded colleges, 56 private career colleges, eleven private faith based institutions, fifteen flight schools and two professional schools. These data include the information of (1) courses that focus on climate change, hazards, risks, and disasters, and (2) academic programs that are related to the topic of climate change, disasters, and other crises. The original data also indicate faculty members who have expertise in conducting hazard and disaster research. However, faculty members’ data (e.g., names, email addresses, and office telephone numbers) cannot be shared publicly due to privacy and ethical concerns. The users may use the courses and programs information included in this dataset to identify related faculty members. These data illustrate the strengths and weaknesses of hazards-and-disaster-specific post-secondary education resources in Alberta which might encourage hazards and disaster educators to understand the existing gaps and explore possible solutions. Researchers in Canada and internationally could use these data to navigate their potential research collaborators through related educational programs. Future students could use these data to search for hazards-and-disaster-related programs and courses, as well as contact potential faculty members in related departments. The general public could use the data to further search detailed information associated with the courses and programs they might be interested in as well as identify their community-based scholars through the courses and programs.