Disaster risk reduction postgraduate personal statement example

Personal statement example

My interest in disaster risk reduction began with a fairly unglamorous piece of fieldwork. For my undergraduate dissertation in Geography I looked at surface water flood exposure in a market town of about nine thousand people, overlaying published flood risk mapping with census data on household car ownership and tenure. What struck me was how uneven the picture became once I stopped treating the population as a single unit. The streets with the deepest modelled depths were not the streets where people were most likely to be able to leave quickly, or to have insurance, or to have anywhere obvious to go. The hazard was only part of the problem. That conclusion, which I now recognise as a fairly standard one in the vulnerability literature, is what pushed me towards postgraduate study rather than straight into a mapping role.

Reading around the subject since graduating has sharpened what I want to examine more closely. Ben Wisner and colleagues' pressure and release framing in At Risk helped me articulate why my dissertation findings were not incidental: the same social processes that shape everyday disadvantage shape who is harmed by a hazard event. I have also followed the Sendai Framework's emphasis on understanding risk and on strengthening governance, and I am interested in the practical gap between that ambition and what a small local authority can realistically deliver with a part-time emergency planning post. I would like to work on that gap, particularly on how risk assessments are translated into plans that ordinary residents can actually use.

My current job has taught me more about this than I expected. I work full time as a customer services adviser for a district council, and a good share of my calls are about drainage, fallen branches, blocked gullies and standing water. I log reports, check against existing jobs, explain who is responsible for what, and speak to people who are frustrated because the boundary between highways, water company and householder is not obvious from the pavement. I have learned to take a clear account quickly, to be accurate about what I cannot promise, and to notice patterns: the same three addresses appearing every autumn tells you something that a model does not.

Alongside this I am a flood warden in my village. The role is a volunteer one and deliberately limited: I check river and gauge levels when warnings are issued, distribute information leaflets, keep an updated list of residents who have asked to be contacted, and report observations upwards. I have helped run two sandbag store checks and a community information evening in the village hall, where I set out chairs, took names and answered questions about warning services. Turnout was about thirty people, and the questions were almost all about specifics, such as where to park a car and whether text alerts reach older handsets.

I was also fortunate to spend two days shadowing a county resilience officer. I sat in on a multi-agency planning meeting as an observer, helped check and repack grab bag contents, and cross-referenced an out-of-hours contact list against departmental records. I did not exercise any professional responsibility, but watching how information was chased, challenged and recorded showed me how much of this work is careful administration rather than dramatic response.

I am applying now because I want formal grounding in risk assessment methods, vulnerability analysis and the international policy context, and the confidence to use GIS analytically rather than descriptively. In the longer term I hope to work in local or regional resilience planning in the UK, ideally on community-level preparedness with people who are least able to absorb a shock. I intend to continue my volunteering while studying, since it keeps the theory honest.

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