IDRiM2020 | Virtual Workshop of the International Society for Integrated Disaster Risk Management

Ilan is Head of Strategic Science Initiatives and Programs and the Knowledge, Learning, and Societal Change research Alliance (www.KLASICA.org) at IASS, where he has been since 2012. He is also Adjunct Professor in the School of Sustainability of Arizona State University (ASU) and works in alternate blocks of several weeks in Potsdam and in the ASU Barrett and O'Connor Washington DC Center. He has published more than 60 peer-reviewed articles in major journals, books, and reports in both social and natural science and holds three patents. He serves on international advisory boards on affordable energy for humanity, environmental systems research, social dimensions of creativity and innovation, and integrated risk governance.

Over the past decade, his focus has been on understanding and facilitating processes of societal change toward just and equitable sustainable futures, including understanding scientific, local, and cultural knowledge systems for decision-making on common resources; characterising the role in different cultural and socio-economic contexts of affective narratives of vision and identity in guiding and motivating collective behaviour change; and the potential utility of narratives in modelling social dynamics.

Junko currently serves as the Disaster Risk Management Specialist in the Social Urban Rural and Resilience Global Practice Unit, the World Bank, based in Yangon, Myanmar. She also serves as Research Scholar in Water Program at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Vienna Austria.

Her current assignment in the World Bank focuses on the analysis of donor assistance and development and implementation of various technical assistance and investment projects related to disaster risk and climate resilience in Southeast Asia.

Peijun is a professor of geography, the president of Qinghai Normal University, the former executive vice president of Beijing Normal University. He is the deputy dean of the Academy of Disaster Reduction and Emergency Management, Ministry of Emergency Management and Ministry of Education of China. Peijun is an academician of the International Eurasian Academy of Sciences. His research focuses on the theory of natural disasters and risk management.

He is the co-chair of the scientific committee of the Integrated Risk Governance Project, a core project of Future Earth and the International Human Dimensions Programme of Global Environmental Change. Peijun also services as the member of the UNISDR Scientific and Technical Advisory Group, the chairman of the Asia Scientific and Technical Advisory Group for DRR, the jury member of the Volvo Environment Prize, the vice chairman of The Expert Committee of National Disaster Reduction Commission of China, the vice chairman of The Insurance Society of China, and the member of the Expert Group of the State Emergency Management Office under The State Council of China.

Jong-il is Deputy Director at Disaster Safety Institute, Korea Disaster Relief Association. He received his M.A., Ph.D. from Kyoto University, Japan in 2008, 2011. His subject of interest and area of research are disaster risk management, participatory methods for risk communication, and disaster resilience of the local community.

He worked as an assistant professor of the Department of Management of Social Systems and Civil Engineering at Tottori University for 8 years (2011–2018). He moved to Director in Center for Fire Service and Disaster Prevention Research, National Crisisonomy Institute (NCI), Chungbuk National University in 2019, Korea. He has carried out a facilitator many times in a participatory workshop for disaster risk management at the local community.

Subhajyoti is an Associate Professor in Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI), Kyoto University, Japan. His research interest includes disaster risk communication, and implementation science for DRR. His research investigates what sorts of participatory methods, techniques and tools are critical for meaningfully community involvement in disaster risk governance.

He has been involved in different international research projects on disaster risk management and climate change adaptation in India, Bangladesh, Japan, and Ghana. As an attempt to social implementation process of DRR, he conducted in-depth field studies on the role of social networks, social capital and trust in the dissemination process of disaster preventive technologies. He is a recipient of the international award “Hazards 2000” in 2016. He has published widely on participatory disaster risk management and risk communication.

Tetsuya obtained his BS, MSc, and PhD degrees in earth and planetary sciences from Kyoto University, Japan. He started his career as an assistant professor at Department of Naval Architecture and Ocean Engineering, Osaka University in 1999 and worked in the fields of marine meteorology and ocean engineering. During 2001-2002, he was a visiting scientist at National Center for Atmospheric Research in the United States. He then moved to Tokyo Institute of Technology as a lecturer in 2004, and worked in the interdisciplinary fields of meteorology, wind engineering, and computational fluid dynamics.

Since March 2007, he has been an associate professor at Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University. He has been working not only in the atmospheric science fields but also collaboratively in the fields of wind engineering, hydrology, coastal engineering, volcanology, etc. He has been actively studying the impact assessment of extreme weather and climate change.

Hirokazu is a professor at Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University, Japan. He received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Kyoto University. Much of Hirokazu’s research is on the economics of natural hazards. Hirokazu has done pioneering research on economic consequence analysis and his major focus has been on economic resilience to natural disasters at the levels of the individual business, market, and regional economy. Another one of his research interests is methodologies for integrated disaster risk management and governance. Through these academic activities, he wishes to contribute in establishing “implementation science” as a key area of science for disaster risk reduction.

From September 2010, he is serving a role of Vice President of International Society of Integrated Disaster Risk Management (IDRiM Society). He is also serving a secretary-general of Global Alliance of Disaster Research Institutes (GADRI) from 2015. is elected as a member of the Science and Technology Advisory Group (STAG) for the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) for a term of two years in cognition of his experience and contributions as well as potential of GADRI's contribution to disaster research.

Guoyi is a senior research fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI). His education includes PhD (Geography), MSc (Environmental Sciences), MA (Human Geography), BSc (Geography). He was a theme co-leader for Managing Environmental Systems and Reducing Climate Risk. He specialises in nature-society synthesis in the areas of human dimensions of environmental change, natural disasters in developing countries, water resources, and applications of Geographic Information System (GIS).

His earlier research experience concentrated on watershed management in connection with non-point source water pollution control. Over the years, his research has expanded to include environmental impact assessment, regional environmental planning, risk analysis and hazard management, dynamic nature of vulnerability and resilience of human-environmental systems. More recently, he has been focused on mainstreaming natural disaster risk reduction; energy security and climate policy in China; China and its transition, and the broad environmental and social implications of that transition.

Irasema is former Director and current Professor and Researcher at the Institute of Geography at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). She received her PhD from King's College London in Geomorphology. Her research seeks to understand the root causes and drivers of disaster risk through forensic investigations of disasters (FORIN), and to promote integrated research on disaster risk. She is particularly interested in bridging the gap between science and policy-making and practice in the developing world. Since 2000, Irasema has also been working in collaboration with the National Centre for Disaster Prevention (CENAPRED) in Mexico.

She has previously served as member of the Board of Directors of the Global Alliance of Disaster Research Institutes (GADRI); the Committee of Scientific Planning and Review (CSPR) of the International Science Council (ISC, former ICSU); as Vice-President of the International Consortium on Landslides (ICL), the International Association of Geomorphologists (IAG), the International Geographical Union (IGU) and the Integrated Research on Disaster Risk programme of the International Science Council (ISC-IRDR). Irasema is currently a member of Mountain Research Initiative (MRI) Science Leadership Council, the International Geoscience Programme Council (IGCP) Scientific Board, UNESCO; and chair of the Disaster Risk Reduction Steering Committee of the Regional Office for Latin America and the Caribbean, International Science Council (ISC-ROLAC).

Muneta received his Bachelor, Masters, and Ph.D. degrees from Kyoto University, Japan, in 1997, 1999 and 2003 respectively. He started his career at Tottori University as a research associate in 2001. He moved to Disaster Prevention Research Institute, Kyoto University as an associate professor in 2005. He stayed in University of Minnesota, USA, in 2008 as a visiting researcher. Moreover, he once had adjunct researcher positions in University of Tokyo and, currently, in Waseda University, and Center for Spatial Information Science, University of Tokyo. Since March, 2018, he has been a guest research scholar at International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA).

His research fields are economic analysis of disaster risk management, where he has developed the methods of cost-benefit analysis of disaster prevention and infrastructure provision, and social network analysis, where he has worked on dynamics of network formation of people in local a community. He is now intensively working on simulation models of macroeconomic dynamics under disaster risk and mitigation investment.

Elisabeth is a Principal Scientist at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) which is the European Commission’s in-house science service. As such, the JRC supports the conception, implementation and monitoring of EU policy. Her research experience includes risk analysis of natural-hazard impact on chemical infrastructures, nuclear-reactor safety, severe-accident management and consequence analysis.

Since 2006 she leads the Natech (natural-hazard triggered technological accidents) activity at the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre and has successfully proposed and participated in various projects related to Natech risk reduction. She is Steering Group Member of the OECD project on the “Control of the impact of natural hazards on chemical installations”. Recently, she has started to expand her work to natural-hazard impact on non-chemical critical infrastructures (e.g. space-weather impacts on the power grid).

David is an Associate Professor by special appointment at Tohoku University's International Research Institute for Disaster Science, as well as a researcher for the Japanese National Research Institute for Earth Science and Disaster Resilience. Originally from Hawaii, United States, he received his degrees from the University of Hawaii and was a fellow at the East-West Center.

He completed his Ph.D at Tohoku University, and was a recipient of the JSPS Post-Doctoral Fellowship which was conducted at the University of Tokyo. Dr. Nguyen specialises in disaster management, urban planning, tourism and transportation.

Gisela is a biologist and a mediation trainer. She holds a Ph.D. in Human Biology from the Ludwig Maximilians University, Munich and received professional training in business mediation (certified by the German Society for Business Mediation, DGMW). Her research interests include risk perception, risk governance of natural hazards, participatory modelling, citizen science, stakeholder and public participation, mediation and facilitation of environmental conflicts and mediation trainings.

She has been a member of scientific staff at DIALOGIK since 2015, leading projects funded by German ministries: EnAHRgie, OptiSys, RIESGOS, CitizClima (funding of proposal writing). She was a former member of scientific staff at the University of Stuttgart, Institute for Sociology of Technology and Environment. Conceptualisation and coordination of the M.Sc. program "Citizen Participation and Urban Planning" from 2012 to 2016.

Emmanuel is a 1st Class Research Professor of the CNRS and a Historian at Chrono-Environment Laboratory (University of Besançon). He is interested in extreme events and disasters over the last 500 years in the fields of climate, geology, (volcanism, earthquakes, landslides), epidemiology and strategy in Europe, Africa, Asia and North America.

He is used to collaborate with various public scientific institutions (IRSN, CEA), Industrial Partners (EdF) and private companies (re-insurers, consulting firms, start-ups). He is also an expert for the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR) and the European Commission. His scientific activity offered him the opportunity to work, as a visiting professor, by the Universities of Cambridge (UK), Geneva (Swiss), Kyoto (Japan), Kunming and Guangzhou or Canton (China) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge, USA). Emmanuel has published extensively, and with his collaborators established a historical database of extreme events in France (http://www.unicaen.fr/histclime/).

Katsuya obtained his Ph.D. from Osaka University, Japan in the field of social psychology. He worked as Associate Professor at Department of Social Research, Nara University for 12 years (1992-2003) before he served as Associate Professor at Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI), Kyoto University for 6 years (2004-2009). Currently he is working as Professor at DPRI, Kyoto University. His fields of interest are disaster risk communication, disaster reduction education, and disaster information studies. His recent research projects revolve around a gaming approach to disaster risk communication, the development of a participatory method in community and school disaster education, and narrative psychological studies on disaster preparedness and recovery.

He is also involved in several committees at the national and local level in Japan regarding disaster management. He received the Norio Okada Implementation Science Award from IDRiM Society in 2018.

James is a Sociologist and former Branch Chief of the Earthquake, Tsunami and Volcanic Hazards Program for California’s Office of Emergency Services. He received BA and MA degrees from the Ohio State University and a Ph.D. in Social Psychology from UCLA. His areas of expertise include human behaviour in disaster, earthquake and tsunami warning, tsunami evacuation strategies and the relationship between emergency managers and scientists in responding to natural disasters.

From October 2015 through September 2016 he was a visiting research professor at the Disaster Prevention Research Institute of Kyoto University in Japan. In November 2017, he returned to Japan for a second year at Kyoto University. He served as a member of the Advisory Committee for the US National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (2013-2019) and was a program reviewer for the National Tsunami Hazard Mitigation Program in 2017. He is currently a Research Affiliate of the Natural Hazards Center, a center of the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Andrew is Professor of Disaster and Development, Head of Subject for Human Geography, Policy and Development and Leader of the Disaster and Development Network (DDN) at Northumbria University, UK. He leads disaster, development, health and education initiatives that engage multi-sector partnerships. Andrew entered employment in the academic sector following practice-based appointments and voluntary sector skill sharing in conflict affected areas. His research developed from an early interdisciplinary focus on environment, health and population displacement that lead to the award of PhD (Geography) from King’s College London in 1996, after which he gained a first full-time academic post at Sussex University.

He subsequently moved to his current and founding base for disaster and development studies at Northumbria’s Geography Department. His research informs the theoretical, methodological and policy aspects of disaster risk reduction and response, health ecology, sustainable development, adaptive capacity and human security in contexts of complex change. Recent elected positions include as Chair of the steering group for Enhanced Learning and Research for Humanitarian Assistance (ELRHA) supported by UK Government, Welcome Trust and humanitarian agencies, and ongoing roles as Board Director for the International Society for Integrated Disaster Risk Management (IDRiM), Chair of Board for Global Alliance of Disaster Research Institutes (GADRI) and Co-Chair of United Kingdom Alliance for Disaster Research (UKADR).

Eiichi is professor of Atmospheric and Hydrospheric Disasters Division, DPRI since 2004 and chief of Joint Research Unit for Climate Change Risk Projection and Adaptation Strategies (JRU-CCRA). He received Bachelor, Masters, and Ph.D, Eng. degrees from Kyoto University, Japan. He started his career at Water Resources Research Center at Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI), Kyoto University from 1985 first as research associate and later promoted to Associate Professor. His research fields are Hydrometeorology and Radar Hydrology, Rainfall and flood predictions, Climate change impact assessment and adaptation. He has published about 200 papers in peer-reviewed journals in radar hydrology, meteorology, urban hydrology, civil engineering, water resources engineering.

He has been holding visiting researcher/professor position at various national and international institutions, e.g. National Research Institute for Erath Science and Disaster Prevention (NIED), Japan, Tropical Marine Science Institute at National University of Singapore, and University Technology MARA, Malaysia. He is leading big collaborative research projects with other universities and institutes such as “Integrated Research on State-of-the-art Multi-sensors In-situ Observation of Storm Genesis, and Reduction of Serious Disaster due to Heavy Rainfall” and Team D of “Integrated Hazards Projections in Integrated Research Program for Advancing Climate Models”, supported by the Ministry of Education Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). He is a member of the river council of Japan.

Mohsen is a distinguished professor of earthquake engineering and risk management at International Institute of Earthquake Engineering and seismology (IIEES). He graduated with honours from the Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (USA), receiving his B.Sc. in Civil Engineering and Nuclear Engineering, his M.Sc. in Structural Dynamic and his PhD in Earthquake Engineering. His current research interests include earthquake risk management, seismic hazard assessment, random vibration, seismic isolation and equipment-structure interactions.

He is the Chief Editor of JSEE and IDRiM Journals, and has authored more than 140 papers and 3 books in the field of earthquake engineering, seismic hazard and risk analysis, risk management and planning. Mohsen is the Director and member of the Executive committee of International Association of Earthquake engineering (IAEE), Chairman of Earthquake Hazard, Risk and Strong Ground Motion Commission of IASPEI, member of UN-ISDR Scientific and Technical commission, Director and member of board of World Seismic Safety Initiative, member of Global Earthquake Risk Model Project; Member of Geo-Hazard Initiative, Member of GSHAP, Member of Global Risk Forum-Davos, and many other scientific communities.

Norio was Director of the Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI), at Kyoto University from 2009 to 2011 and is now Professor Emeritus of Kyoto University. He currently acts as an adviser to a disaster governance research institute (IDiARRG) at Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan. Norio Okada studied infrastructure planning, water resource management, and systems methodology at Kyoto University, gaining a B. Eng (1970), an M. Eng (1972), and a Dr. Eng (1977).

His major research interests are twofold: methodological development and application, and field-based research for planning and management of physical and human systems, particularly related to natural disasters, the environment, water resources and infrastructure systems. His methodological foci include risk management and governance, conflict management and game theoretic approaches, and adaptive management of complex systems under high uncertainty. Since 2001, he has been leading an extensive international research initiative to establish a new cross-disciplinary research area called Integrated Disaster Risk Management, by organizing a series of international conferences and workshops in collaboration, the culmination of which is the formation of the new academic society called “The International Society for Integrated Disaster Risk Management (IDRiM) Society.

Ortwin is scientific director at the International Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) in Potsdam (Germany) and professor for environmental sociology and technology assessment at the University of Stuttgart. He also directs the non-profit company DIALOGIK, a research institute for the investigation of communication and participation processes. Ortwin has a doctoral degree in social psychology from the University of Cologne. His research interests include risk governance (analysis perception, communication), stakeholder and public involvement in environmental decision making, transformation processes in economics, politics and society and sustainable development.

His career includes teaching and research positions at Clark University (Worcester, USA), the Swiss Institute of Technology (Zuerich) and the Center of Technology Assessment (Stuttgart). He is currently an Adjunct Professor for “Integrated Risk Analysis” at Stavanger University (Norway), Honorary Professor at the Technical University Munich and Affiliate Professor for “Risk Governance” at Beijing Normal University. Renn has published more than 30 monographs and over 250 peer-reviewed articles. His most prominent English publication is the book “Risk Governance. Coping with Uncertainty in a Complex World (London: Earthscan 2008).

Rajib is professor at the Graduate School of Media and Governance in Keio University. He received his Doctor of Science from Osaka City University in 1997. His interests include climate change adaptation at community level, and its policy implication to developing countries, urban risk management, disaster education, and community-based environment and disaster management.

He is a Senior Fellow of Institute of Global Environmental Strategies (IGES) Japan, and the Chairperson of SEEDS Asia and CWS Japan, two Japanese NGOs. He is also co-founder of a Delhi (India) based social entrepreneur start-up Resilience Innovation Knowledge Academy (RIKA). He is the Co-chair of the United Nations Asia Science Technology Academic Advisory Group (ASTAAG) and Coordinating Lead Author (CLA) IPCC’s 6th Assessment report. He is the editor of a book series on disaster risk reduction, published by Springer and the Chief Editor of an academic journal Progress in Disaster Science by Elsevier. He has published more than 45 books and over 300 academic papers and book chapters. More of his work can be seen in: www.rajibshaw.org.

Stefan is a is a Senior Research Scholar with the Risk and Resilience (RISK) program at IIASA in Laxenburg, and the leader of the Risk Analysis and Modelling group. A member of the Board of Directors of the Integrated Disaster Risk Management (IDRiM) Society and the Board of Directors for the Global Alliance of Disaster Research Institutes (GADRI), Stefan is also a lecturer at the University of Vienna, the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology and the UME Graduate School at the Institute for Advanced Study in Pavia. He studied statistics with a focus on mathematical statistics at the Department of Statistics and Decision Support Systems and Sociology, empirical branch, at the Department of Sociology, University of Vienna.

His main research interests include risk management of extreme events such as natural disasters in developing countries, statistical (stochastic) modelling of rare events, extreme value theory, dependency of risks using copula approaches, econometrics, and multivariate analysis. He has published widely, including a number of book chapters and articles in major peer-reviewed journals such as Nature and Global Environmental Change. He is a regularly invited speaker at major scientific conferences and insurance meetings and has also facilitated and participated in high-level workshops in the Caribbean, Madagascar, Turkey, the Philippines, India and Mexico.

Yoko is a researcher and associate professor in Nagaoka University of Technology. She received her Dr. Eng. in 2007 from Kyoto University. Her research interests include disaster recovery and preparedness process by local and citizen groups.

Previously she was a staff member of Rescue Stock Yard, a Nagoya-based non-profit organisation for disaster relief and preparedness.

Yoshiyuki Yama, Ph.D. in Sociology, is Professor and currently acts as Deputy Director of Institute of Disaster Area Revitalization, Regrowth and Governance at Kwansei Gakuin University in Japan, and he is also Adjunct Professor at the Disaster Prevention Research Institute of Kyoto University (2020-), Tokyo University (2016), International Research Centre for Japanese Studies (2012-2013), University of International Relations Beijing (2019), Beijing Foreign Studies University (2014-2015), Yunnan Minzu University (2014-) and Visiting Researcher at Université Paris Diderot Paris (2013-2014).

His major research interest is on community and narrative-based disaster risk management, particularly in depopulated areas. He has authored and edited more than 30 books and published numerous scholarly articles in the areas of sociology, anthropology, folklore studies, archaeology, heritage studies, history of Japanese Philosophy.

Ásthildur Elva is an independent scholar at Reykjavik Academy Iceland, Lecturer in Crisis Management at the University of Iceland (UI) and is presently working on crisis/disaster management research projects for the Institute of International Affairs and the Institute of Sustainable Development at the UI. She holds a PhD in Political Science and a Cand. Oecon. in Economics. She has studied risk reduction and response to avalanches, earthquakes and ship stranding.

She has led an Icelandic research group on crisis management in Iceland, and has developed along with Icelandic scholars general guidelines on long-term response to natural disaster for local authorities. She has worked on her research in Sweden, the United States of America and Japan. Her main research focus has been on the impact of culture on crisis management, revealing the influence of cultural bias in decision making processes.

Ana Maria is a Professor at the Disaster Prevention Research Institute of Kyoto University. She is an international expert in industrial risk management and emergency planning for conjoint natural and technological (Natech) disasters. She is a chemical engineer and holds a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering from Tulane University in New Orleans, USA.

Her research interests include risk analysis of flooding, storm, earthquake, tsunami and climate change – induced impacts on infrastructure systems, Natech accident investigation and consequence analysis, and disaster risk management. She has over 40 peer-reviewed publications in international journals.

Ilan is a Professor of Economics at Victoria University and the Chair in the Economics of Disasters. His research and teaching focus on the economic aspects of natural hazards and disasters, and other related topics in environmental, development, and international economics. He is also the founding Editor-in-Chief of Economics of Disasters and Climate Change, a journal published by SpringerNature.

He previously worked at the University of Hawaii, and consulted for the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, UNISDR, the International Monetary Fund, ASEAN, the Japanese Government, and the Chilean Central Bank.

William is a full Professor of city and regional planning at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo and founding director of the College of Architecture and Environmental Design Resilient Communities Research Institute. His global work is on how to implement the best possible recovery and reconstruction outcomes after a large-scale disaster occurs. Locally, his focus is on resiliency and adaptation, making use planning policy decisions that result in risk reduction through partnerships between the civil society, the private sector, and government.

His professional hazard and risk reduction efforts are transnational. Examples include serving as a subject matter expert to the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Chilean National Centre for Integrated Management of Disaster Risk, and New Zealand’s Joint Centre for Disaster Research.

Adam is a Research Professor in the University of Southern California Sol Price School of Public Policy, and a faculty affiliate of USC’s Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events (CREATE). Previously, he held faculty and department chair positions in applied economics departments at The Pennsylvania State University and West Virginia University, as well as a faculty position at the University of California, Riverside. He received his PhD in economics from Cornell University, but has worked on interdisciplinary topics throughout most of his career.

His research interests involve energy and environmental economics, public policy, natural hazards and terrorism, regional science and applied general equilibrium modelling. He has spearheaded the development of CREATE’s comprehensive economic consequence analysis framework and has done pioneering research on resilience at the level of the individual business/household, market/industry and regional/national economy. He has also completed dozens of case studies of disaster consequences, resilience and recovery, including the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Bijaya Nand is a Professor Emeritus at the School of Planning and Architecture in New Delhi as well as a Professor Emeritus and Chairman at Centurion University of Technology and Management in Bhubaneswar. His research interests lie in urban development and control mechanisms, capacity-building for resilient communities and integrated disaster risk management.

He has over than 45 years of professional experience as expert consultant/team leader in national and international projects addressing topics of land use and critical infrastructure planning and management, disaster risk management, climate change impact and development strategy. Examples include his position as a senior adviser and coordinator for the GCOE Human Security Engineering for Mumbai mega-city project of Kyoto University and his involvement with the UNDP and UN DESDA projects focused on urban governance, municipal capacity-building, social development and poverty eradication.