MOOC

Description

The NAIAD Massive Open Online Course, Greening Risk Reduction with Nature Based Solutions, addresses a specific gap: the people who have to decide about Nature Based Solutions are rarely the people who developed the methods for assessing them. The course closes that distance by taking the assessment methodologies, the participatory processes, the valuation of natural capital and the construction of a business model, and presenting them in the sequence in which a real case passes through them.

The material was developed in a co-design process with the whole NAIAD consortium, and the demonstration sites are used throughout as the working contexts for flood and drought prevention and mitigation. It is organised in four chapters: an introduction to Nature Based Solutions and the debates on natural capital and the insurance value of the environment; the steps and tools used in designing and implementing them; examples of the assessment and implementation trajectory from the NAIAD and other European demonstration cases; and the operationalisation of insurance value through the creation of business models.

The course was first run as a summer programme in August 2019, which tested the format and established the balance between the online material and the field experience that the participants valued most. During the online weeks, NAIAD experts are available for consultation on the Eco:actuary toolkit, on risk perception and its inclusion in system dynamics modelling, on economic valuation and co-benefits, and on integrated risk assessment and meta-models.

What you will learn

To explain the resilience potential and the trade-offs of Nature Based Solutions in the context of rapid-onset hazards such as floods and slow-onset events such as droughts. To assess the risk reduction achieved by different implementations across a broad range of scales, in urban and in rural contexts. To illustrate how the risk reduction potential of Nature Based Solutions can be included in insurance schemes. And to argue the case from the multiple environmental, social and economic benefits that they generate.

At the end of the course, participants work in groups to design and defend a viable business model for a given case, and discuss with one another which of the models proposed is more likely to succeed — which is the step that most courses on the subject omit.

How it is delivered

Online, over six weeks with one week in the field, combining background documents and academic references with video and presentation material contributed by the NAIAD consortium and its advisers. Assessment is through quizzes during the course and a written report at the end. The course has been developed for several audiences: as part of the curriculum of the universities in the consortium, as an open online course for a wider public, and as the backbone of tailored trainings in which coaching is provided on a participant's own case.

Who it is for

Water professionals, planners and engineers moving into Nature Based Solutions; staff of insurers, reinsurers and public authorities working on flood and drought risk; consultants and NGO staff; and postgraduate students in water management, environmental economics and related fields.