Urban Environment, Sustainability and Climate Change 

Overview

Smart and resilient cities are essential in tackling the growing threat of climate change impacts and fostering sustainability. This learning track focuses on different analytical and practical approaches to foster resilience and environmental sustainability in urban areas worldwide among others through smart city innovations. 

Students will learn how cities can achieve sustainability from a social, economic and environmental perspective, what are the most innovative initiatives being undertaken by sustainable, smart, and resilient cities, , how to implement effective and efficient urban adaptation and mitigation initiatives, and how cities can achieve a higher level of resilience.

Course objectives

At the end of the Urban Environment, Sustainability and Climate Change  programme at Erasmus University Rotterdam , the students should be able to:

• Use geographical information systems and large data sets analysis using software such as ArcGIS, QGIS and R.

• Understand what nature-based solutions, ICT-based innovations, climate change adaptation and mitigation are and how they impact cities and its citizens.
• Use the Climate Action Prioritisation Tool, the Tygron Geodesign Platform, and InVEST (Integrated Valuation of Ecosystem Services and Tradeoffs) software to model environment and climate decisions and simulate scenarios.

Career prospectives

After you graduate you will be an expert with extended knowledge in the sphere of urban management and development. The career prospects of urban management development graduates are excellent. Cities are expanding increasingly fast, this means that there is a big demand in urban professionals who are able to come up with solutions and innovations that will make a big difference in a city. Once you’ve completed the programme you will be able to work in various sectors ranging from city/town planner to urban economy and finance specialist. 

IHS is a highly reputable institute with a strong reputation with donor agencies and training centers worldwide. Our lecturers have outstanding international experience and continue to work all over the world, therefore, creating a possibility to discuss and initiate links to programmes and projects in countries and cities of the participants.

Here are a few examples of positions taken up by our graduates:

• Project manager circular economy at Philips
• Urban governance and policy specialist at UN-Habitat
• Architectural consultant at Asian Development Bank
• Spatial planning advisor at GIZ 
• Senior Inspector at the Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development
• Director at Center for Environmentally Sustainable Transport and Climate Change
• Full Professor at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana