JGE378 Natural Hazards
Final Paper
Fall 2025
1 Introduction
You are asked to write a Term Paper in scholarly style, on your chosen and approved Case Study topic. The Term Paper is the most significant component of the Case Study.
Please keep in mind, this Term Paper is meant to be an analytical or critically evaluative work, not just a descriptive work. (See below.)
1.1 Objectives
The objectives ofthe Proposal are for you to:
1. practice written communication of research results in a scholarly format;
2. locate and make effective use of appropriate scholarly resources;
3. present a basic factual summary of the selected natural disaster; and
4. critically analyze the topic from a management perspective.
5. consider how climate change increases aspects of risk and vulnerability
2 The Proposal
The term paper must:
。 Be 1500 to 2000 words in length (6 to 8 pages)
• It should have “normal” margins and “normal” font size (such as Times New Roman 12, Calibri 11, or Arial 11).
• Double-spaced (otherwise it is too crowded for us to read and make comments).
• The word count does not include the figures, maps, cover sheet, or reference list.
• The page count will vary, depending on the font and font size that you use, so please go by the word count.
• You need to use sub-headers.
• Please remember to paginate.
。 Be neatly and professionally presented.
• Since it’s a digital submission and we don’t have to worry about wasting paper, please include a cover page with all relevant information (title, your name, your student number, course number/designator, and date). Title needs to describe the paper. It is not adequate to state term paper assignment or something very general.
。 Be written in a scholarly (academic) writing style.
。 Utilize mainly peer-reviewed scholarly sources.
• Reliable and timely documents such as government publications and even newspaper articles can be acceptable supplementary sources in some cases, but they are not scholarly sources.
• You should have at least 10 sources with 8 of these being peer-reviewed journal articles.
• All sources should be cited and referenced using APA style. Double-check your referencing using a reliable source
。 The Term Paper is meant to be an analytical or critically evaluative work, not just a descriptive work. If you consult the rubric attached you will see that there are 40 marks allocated for the level of critical analysis.
• Recall the difference between the “summative/ descriptive” and “evaluative/analytical” paragraphs in your Annotated Bibliography — that is what we are aiming to apply in the Term Paper. We also covered this idea of descriptive vs. critical/analytical writing in a tutorial activity.
。 Include any figures, tables, maps, or diagrams that are relevant to your topic and/or help strengthen your arguments.
• Figures should be numbered, fully captioned, and with their sources fully and correctly referenced.
• Maps are particularly useful, especially if you are referring to multiple locations.
• Ideally, photographs should be from open sources (not copyrighted by the photographer); the same is true of diagrams. Diagrams from scholarly sources can be used if they are properly sourced and cited.
。 Be carefully proofread to eliminate typos and small grammatical errors (if you are not going to read your own paper carefully, why should we. . . ?).
。 Be submitted on time via Quercus as a .pdf
。 Above all, must be your own work, produced specifically for the purpose of this course.
• It is acceptable to include writing that you produced for your Proposal, Annotated Bibliography, or Country Risk Profile. Those assignments are part of the “scaffolded” Case Study assignment, so technically they are all part of the same assignment submission.
• The paper should be based on your in-depth research and organized writing. You may use a few carefully chosen quotations to support your writing. When you are tempted to copy and paste a quotation first consider whether it adds to the paper. Second, consider how you could effectively paraphrase or summarize.
3 Grading Rubric
Please see rubric on Quercus on the submission page for this assignment.