Disaster recovery team cleaning up rubble

Bringing together excellence in research and teaching

Preparing for the emergency front line

Conflict and disasters afflict some of the most vulnerable populations on earth, and wreak havoc on societies. Prevention, and timely and effective responses are necessary to save lives and preserve infrastructure, and to promote socio-economic recovery and build resilience. 

Our research focuses on drivers of these risks, whilst our education activities prepare professionals and organisations to better respond and promote resilience, seeking solutions with governmental and non-governmental organisations, and with commercial and military collaborators. The scale of disaster response frequently requires the coordination of military and civil expertise.

Within the synergistic fields of defence, risk and resilience the 麻豆社区 has a world class profile, with research expertise in key areas such as global governance, geopolitical conflicts, risk mapping and monitoring, peace, security and deterrence, AI and autonomy, ethics, risk management, disaster response, and organisational and community resilience. CEDRR incorporates our expertise in these fields into one Centre of Excellence, providing a focal point, coordination, and an incubator for future initiatives.

We have a long track record in providing relevant education services, we welcome applications from a variety of backgrounds, including those from the military, first responders and resilience practitioners. We offer degrees, short courses and bespoke executive education, either on campus in discrete blocks of teaching, online at your convenience, or via distance learning or Learning at Work. Many of our programmes are also accredited. 


Recognition of Prior Learning

At Portsmouth, our 麻豆社区 can receive academic credit for Recognised Prior Learning on most of our courses, including those serving and former services personnel. RPL can be acquired in previous study, employment, voluntary work and training courses, reducing the total length of studies. We are also an accredited MOD education provider accepting ELCAS credits which greatly reduce the cost to individual students.

Find out more

Disaster recovery team cleaning up rubble

Partnerships

  • Hampshire and Isle of Wight Local Resilience Forum
  • South Central Regional Defence and Security Cluster(DASA-sponsored)
  • SimEx: our annual disaster response simulation exercise
  • UN World Food Programme
  • Royal Air Force
  • Royal Navy
  • Defence College of Logistics, Policing and Administration
  • Defence School of Electronic and Mechanical Engineering
  • London Fire Brigade
  • Oil Spill Response Ltd
  • Technical Rescue International Ltd
  • Helyx Secure Information Systems Ltd
  • Institute of Search and Technical Rescue
  • ServeOn Search and Rescue

Impact

Explore the impact our research is having on defence, risk and resilience. From using satellite imagery to fight crime and using drones in disaster responses.


Recent funded projects

  • Guiding readers to a greater understanding of autonomous vehicles, including those that operate in the air, on land, on the water, and underwater.

  • Creating a Trustworthy Robotic Autonomous Drone System to support Battlefield Casualty Triage.

  • A soil mapping project that informs environmental management and climate change mitigation in the British Virgin Islands.

  • Exploring the impact of Covid19 in developing countries and good practice guidelines for disaster risk reduction.

  • Developed the Virtual Control Room (VCR), a novel and robust system using AI that can provide a situational picture in the Arctic Ocean region.

  • Helping the the Arctic and North-Atlantic (ANA) region cope with security and safety threats as a result of increased commercial activity in the region.

  • A satellite enabled digital insurance ecosystem for small-hold farmers in Colombia.

  • Understanding Mental Health and Moral Injury in UK Military Chaplains.

  • Using satellite data to assist climate change resilience in Pacific Small Island Developing States.

  • UK Space Agency, Training Programme

    Providing data and AI training to military and first responders.

Rubble pile from natural disaster

Project highlights


Our members

Sara Eileen Bertin Hadleigh-Dunn Portrait

Media ready expert

Dr Sara Hadleigh-Dunn

Associate Professor in Risk Management and Resilience

sara.hadleigh-dunn@port.ac.uk

Strategy Enterprise and Innovation

Faculty of Business and Law

PhD Supervisor

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Peter Lee Portrait

Professor Peter Lee

Interim Associate Dean (Research)

Professor of Applied Ethics

peter.lee@port.ac.uk

School of Criminology and Criminal Justice

Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences

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Richard Michael Teeuw Portrait

Professor Richard Teeuw

Professor of Geoinformatics and Disaster Risk Reduction

Richard.Teeuw@port.ac.uk

School of the Environment and Life Sciences

Faculty of Science and Health

PhD Supervisor

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Thomas William Smith Portrait

Media ready expert

Dr Tom Smith

Director, Portsmouth Military Education Team

Tom.Smith@port.ac.uk

Portsmouth Business School

Faculty of Business and Law

PhD Supervisor

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Catherine Michelle Juchau Portrait

Dr Michelle Juchau

Principal Lecturer

Michelle.Juchau@port.ac.uk

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Dr Fionnuala Rose

  • Research and Innovation Development Manager
  • fionnuala.rose@port.ac.uk
  • Innovation Space 
  • Research and Innovation Services

PhD research students

  • Toby Meredith (2023-2027) 鈥 SOS! Investigating the use of drones for sea border surveillance of migratory routes to post-Brexit UK: Frameworks, experiences and policies. - funded by the ESRC South Coast Doctoral Training Partnership. (Supervisors: Siklodi, Lee & Greatbatch).
  • Mykyta Saveliev (2023-2026) 鈥 Enterprise Risk Management in SMEs in Ukraine: Utilising High Reliability Theory to Improve Crisis Resilience (supervisors: Hadleigh-Dunn,  Labib and Niekrasova/Odessa National Polytechnic University).
  • Andy Webb: (2023-2026) 鈥 Preparing aviators for their robotic future: assessing organisational change to accommodate human factors when introducing AI and autonomous systems (supervisors: Shakir, Lee and Labib).
  • Harold Chadwick (2022-2025)  鈥 Measuring the potential Impact of an Integrated CANZUK Whole of Government Disaster Response (supervisors: Teeuw, Solana and Morris).
  • Rozene Smith 鈥 Lethal autonomous weapon systems and the violation of human dignity.

Recent publications

  • Bhila, I., Lee, P., and Wakefield, A. (2024) "Autonomous Vehicles, Opportunities, Threats and Challenges" ASIS Foundation.

  • Yildiz, A., Dickinson, J., Priego-Hernandez, J., Teeuw, R., and Shaw, R. (2023) "Effects of disaster education on children's risk perception and preparedness: a quasi鈥恊xperimental longitudinal study" Geographical Journal. Advance online publication.

  • Labib, A., Abdi, M. R., Hadleigh-Dunn, S., and Yazdani, M. (2022) "Evidence-based models to support humanitarian operations and crisis management" Decision Making: Applications in Management and Engineering, 5(1), 113-134.

  • Teeuw, R., Cannata, M., Argyriou, A. V., and Lieberman, O. (2023) "Geoinformatics for Caribbean hurricane risk management and improved community resilience" In 2023 Joint Urban Remote Sensing Event (JURSE) Proceedings (2023 Joint Urban Remote Sensing Event (JURSE)). Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.

  • Redmond, T., Conway, P., Bailey, S., Lee, P., and Lundigran, S. (2023) "How we can protect the protectors: learning from police officers and staff involved in child sexual abuse and exploitation investigations" Frontiers in Psychology , 14, Article 1152446.

  • Lee, P., Tapson, C., Doyle, M., & Karagiannopoulos, V. (2023). Impacts of organisational role and environmental factors on moral injury and trauma amongst police investigators in internet child abuse teams. The Police Journal, 96(1), 153鈥171.

  • Shmidt, B., Labib, A., and Hadleigh-Dunn, S. (2020) "Learning and unlearning from disasters: an analysis of the Virginia Tech shooting and the Lion Air 610 Airline crash" Journal of Surveillance, Security and Safety, 1, 1-15.

  • Iglesias-Mendoza, M., Yunusa-Kaltungo, A., Hadleigh-Dunn, S., and Labib, A. (2021) "Learning how to learn from disasters through a comparative dichotomy analysis: Grenfell Tower and Hurricane Katrina case studies" Sustainability, 13(4), 1-18. Article 2030.

  • Schaefer, M., Teeuw, R., Day, S., Zekkos, D., Weber, P., Meredith, T., and Van Westen, C. J. (2020) "Low-cost UAV surveys of hurricane damage in Dominica: automated processing with co-registration of pre-hurricane imagery for change analysis" Natural Hazards, 101(3), 755-784.

  • Parham, M., Teeuw, R., Solana, C., and Day, S. (2021) "Quantifying the impact of educational methods for disaster risk reduction: a longitudinal study assessing the impact of teaching methods on student hazard perceptions" International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction, 52, Article 101978.

  • Abd Rabuh, A., Teeuw, R. M., Oakey, D. R., Argyriou, A. V., Foxley-Marrable, M., and Wilkins, A. (2024) "Sustainable geoinformatic approaches to insurance for small-scale farmers in Colombia" Sustainability, 16(12), Article 5104.

  • Lee, P. (2024) "The politics and ethics of threat from the air" Digital War, 5, 134-137.

  • Wall, G., Jitt-Aer, K., Jones, D., and Teeuw, R. (2022) "Use of GIS and dasymetric mapping for estimating tsunami-affected population to facilitate humanitarian relief logistics: a case study from Phuket, Thailand" Natural Hazards, 113(1), 185-211.


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Delivered through a bespoke combination of online material which includes, videos, podcasts and interactive packages and in-person teaching, the Portsmouth Military Education Team delivers Professional Military Education to the Royal Air Force as part of its second successive long-term contract with the RAF to design and deliver education packages.

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