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Unit of Study VTEC3010 - Animal Emergency Management in Natural Disasters (2026)

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Unit Snapshot

  • Enrolment information

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Unit description

Veterinary professionals play an integral role in emergency events that impact animal welfare such as floods, bush fires, earthquakes and terrorist attacks. Animal emergency management is a new discipline that provides a framework for various agencies to work together with a transdisciplinary approach to prepare for, respond to, and recover from emergency events. Animal emergency management requires an understanding of the core principles and phases of emergency management (mitigation, preparedness, response, recovery) at a state, regional and local level. This unit will provide the student with basic tools and skills to contribute to animal emergency management and improve human and animal wellbeing.

Unit content

Module 1. Principles of animal and emergency management and terminology

Module 2. Roles in animal emergency management and incident coordination systems

Module 3. Transdisciplinary approach to emergency management and coordination in management

Module 4. Animal behaviour in emergencies

Module 5. One welfare concepts in emergency management and psychological first aid

Module 6. Communication in emergency management and public education

Availabilities

Not currently available in 2026

Learning outcomes

Unit Learning Outcomes express learning achievement in terms of what a student should know, understand and be able to do on completion of a unit. These outcomes are aligned with the graduate attributes. The unit learning outcomes and graduate attributes are also the basis of evaluating prior learning.

On completion of this unit, students should be able to:

explain the four phases of emergency management and how animals should be integrated into each phase

analyse the potential consequences of disasters and emergency events on animal welfare

explain the interdependencies of humans, animals and the environment and how these interdependencies can impact emergency management

apply a relevant incident coordination system and analysis limitations and benefits in relation to animal emergency management.