Conference Schedule

Scientific Programme

Keynote Speaker

Disaster management is a profession that requires interdisciplinary collaboration across the natural sciences, humanities, and social sciences, as well as active engagement between scholars and practitioners. It is also a core function of government, relying on a capable administrative system to support effective mitigation, preparedness, response, and recovery.

Importantly, as illustrated by the Great Hanshin-Awaji Earthquake experience, disaster management extends beyond the government alone. It underscores the critical need for collaboration across all levels of government and among stakeholders in the public, private, nonprofit, and community sectors. The principle of “self-help, mutual assistance, and public assistance” continues to serve as a meaningful guide for individuals and communities during a disaster.

This presentation adopts a public administration perspective to explore key dimensions and challenges in enhancing local disaster management capacity, drawing on insights from research and case studies in Taiwan. It highlights six critical dimensions: resources, networks, technology, institutions, infrastructure, and community attributes. The talk concludes with a call to advance interdisciplinary research at both micro and macro levels, and to foster cross-sector collaboration in support of local disaster resilience.

In the era of climate change, urban disaster risks are escalating worldwide, with extreme weather events becoming more frequent, intense, and interconnected. Cities increasingly face compounding disasters, where one hazard triggers another, amplifying destruction and complicating response efforts. Recent examples include severe floods in Europe, powerful hurricanes in the Americas, and record-breaking typhoons in East Asia. In Japan, the 2024 Noto Peninsula Earthquake exemplified this cascading effect, as extreme rainfall caused severe flooding in already-damaged areas, isolating communities and worsening the crisis. These trends highlight the urgent need for more adaptive and data-driven disaster response strategies.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is rapidly transforming disaster response by enabling impact-based disaster management, shifting the focus from hazard prediction to assessing real-world impacts on people, infrastructure, and communities. AI-powered flood forecasting, integrated with digital twin technology, can simulate disaster scenarios in urban environments, optimizing emergency response and resource allocation.

Furthermore, AI-driven disaster solutions must extend beyond large-scale infrastructure to include small and medium-sized structures, which are often overlooked in resilience planning. Impact-based approaches, supported by AI, can assess risks at a localized scale, predicting how extreme weather, floods, or earthquakes will affect homes, businesses, and local roads. By integrating AI-driven impact assessments, cities can implement more equitable and proactive disaster response strategies that prioritize vulnerable populations.

However, for AI-driven disaster management systems to be effective, several critical challenges must be addressed. These include the need for reliable data collection networks, inter-agency collaboration for integrated disaster response, ethical safeguards to prevent AI biases, and cost-effective strategies for AI deployment.

This presentation will explore the latest advancements in AI and impact-based disaster management, discuss their current limitations, and propose strategic policy recommendations. By leveraging AI’s predictive power and integrating it with urban planning frameworks, cities can transition from hazard-based forecasting to impact-based disaster resilience, ultimately enhancing public safety and minimizing climate-induced risks.

30 years ago the Great Hanshin Awaji Earthquake that struck Kobe City and Hyogo Prefecture on January 17, 1995 was the first major large-scale urban disaster in Japan since World War II, setting the precedent for Japan’s contemporary disaster recovery recovery policy and programes. 14 years ago, the March 11, 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster caused unprecedented damage across Japan’s northeast Tohoku coastline, and a corresponding large scale recovery project. Looking back at recovery processes and outcomes after these major disasters, how can we evaluate the resilience of long-term outcomes for the local residents? Considering building robustness, cultural appropriateness, redundancy, equity, and resourcefulness, this presentation explores the long term outcomes of housing recovery in these cases from Japan. Incorporating compartive research with international cases from long-term recovery after disasters in India and Thialand, it also identifies key factors with the potential to catalyze resilient recovery. This presentation draws from findings in an upcoming book, Resilient Recovery from Disasters: The Long-Term Outcomes of Post-Disaster Housing Reconstruction in India, Thailand and Japan, co-authored by Mittul Vahanvati, Elizabeth Maly, and Titaya Sararit, in press for 2025 with Palgrave (Springer).