UNESCO CHAIR - Educational Activities

UNESCO Chair in DRR-RE organises regular seminar and training on the topics related to the resilient school infrastructure. Below you can find details on previous and upcoming courses and seminars.

UNESCO Chair Webinar Series 2025–2026

We are pleased to announce the new season of the UNESCO Chair Webinar Series on Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience Engineering (2025–2026). Building on the success of previous years, this season will bring together international experts, practitioners, and researchers to share cutting-edge knowledge and practical insights on reducing risks from natural hazards and strengthening resilience of infrastructure and communities.

The 2025–2026 series is organised around six thematic lines:

• From imagery to analysis for disaster risk reduction: Exploring the use of satellite, aerial, and drone imagery—together with AI methods—to assess infrastructure exposure and impacts before and after disasters at multiple scales.
• Applications of AI to support infrastructure resilience: Examining how AI approaches, including machine learning, reinforcement learning, large language models, and explainable AI, can advance the resilience of infrastructure systems.
• Economic loss assessment and prevention: Investigating methods to assess and reduce both direct and indirect economic losses from natural hazards, including cascading effects such as business disruption.
• Holistic system resilience (education policy, research, training): Highlighting interdisciplinary approaches to resilience that account for interdependencies across physical infrastructure, human systems, social vulnerability, and community capacities.
• Structural resilience: Showcasing advances in research and applications aimed at strengthening the structural resilience of buildings and infrastructure against natural hazards.
• Public health considerations in DRR​​​​​​: Discussing the critical intersection between public health and disaster risk reduction.

Through these lines, the series aims to foster dialogue, collaboration, and capacity-building across disciplines, helping to shape more resilient and sustainable futures.

Next webinar:

Past webinars/courses and recordings 

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Towards Resilient Cities through Digital Coupled Human, nAture and INfrastructure Systems (CHAINS)

Open Educational Resources

Online Course - Simplified Structural Assessment for Seismic Fragility Analysis

This course aims to teach simplified structural assessment approaches for the development of fragility curves. Fragility curves are essential components of earthquake risk assessments and are developed and used by researchers, civil engineering consultants and insurers.
The course brings state of the art technqiues and tools to developers of fragility curves, promoting a consistent approach to the inclusion of uncertainty. It is aimed at students with an MSc level education in an engineering subject.

Online Course Access

Data Collection for Creating Baseline Information on Schools

To create a school infrastructure baseline, robust data collection tools are required to systematically capture and update key information about school buildings and facilities. Different approaches can be used to complement the establishment of a baseline for quantitative risk assessments, or to conduct a post-disaster damage assessment.

The GLOSI provides a systematic data collection framework, tools and guidance which support countries in creating a school infrastructure baseline using available technology.

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Structural Taxonomy (Classification) of School Building

The GLOSI taxonomy classifies school buildings based on 12 parameters which are known to govern the building’s structural performance. These parameters can be broadly categorized into primary (first 3 parameters) and secondary (remaining 9 parameters). The output of the taxonomy is a building’s string of attributes related to each parameter. The taxonomy string can be seen as the building’s DNA.

The development of the GLOSI taxonomy stems from recent World Bank engagement information on school buildings in Nepal, El Salvador, Peru and the Kyrgyz Republic.

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Fragility & Vulnerability Functions for Selected School Building Types from Different Countries

A systematic methodological framework is used to derive both seismic fragility and vulnerability functions for all index buildings included in the Catalog of Building Types. Here you can find information on how the functions were derived, as well as references for further reading. The use of these functions for a specific quantitative risk assessment might require calibration to reflect the performance of a given building type particular to a country or region. 

This framework promotes the use of a performance-based assessment as an instrument to identify cost-efficient seismic retrofitting solutions that can be implemented at scale across large portfolios of school buildings at risk from natural hazard events. 

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Strengthening Solutions for Typical School Building Types

This online resource provides vulnerability reduction solutions for selected load bearing masonry and reinforced concrete school building types.

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