With increases in extreme weather events, growing urban areas and unpredictable world events, disasters are causing record levels of damage measured in both currency and human suffering. Developing resilience requires understanding the physical and social constructs that contribute to vulnerability, and requires expertise across sectors to build more resilient cities.
On January 25, Columbia Global Centers | Beijing will hold a lecture on Planning for Urban Disaster Resilience. This lecture will highlight the research and efforts of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University's Earth Institute in building new paradigms for resilience, along with the lessons and initiatives of other notable organizations working to build sustainable communities that are more resilient to 21st century disasters. Dr. Jianhua Xu, Associate Professor of Department of Environmental Management at College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Peking University and Dr. Xiaoli Lu, Associate Director at Tsinghua's Center for Crisis Management Research, are invited as special panelists to have an in-depth discussion with the speaker on disaster vulnerability and risk after the lecture.
Speakers
Jeff Schlegelmilch
Jeff Schlegelmilch, MPH&MBA, is the Deputy Director for the National Center for Disaster Preparedness. His areas of expertise include public health preparedness, community resilience and the integration of private and public sector capabilities. Some topics of past work include developing inter-organizational processes for operational epidemiological modeling, evacuation and sheltering planning for people with medical dependencies, and adapting business intelligence systems for disaster response and recovery operations.
Jianhua Xu
Dr. Jianhua Xu, Associate Professor of Department of Environmental Management at College of Environmental Sciences and Engineering, Peking University. She is also assistant Director of Center for Risk Governance, School of Public Policy and Management at Tsinghua University since 2013. She received her PhD in 2007 from Department of Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University. Her research areas include Environmental and Energy Policy, Environmental Decision Making, Risk Perception and Communication and Risk Governance and she has published widely on these areas in Chinese and international journals. She has presided over a number of key projects such as Risk Communication in Air Quality Management supported by National Natural Sciences Foundation of China and Study on Policy Making Process and Policy Implementation for Preventing and Controlling Air Pollution supported by Center for Industrial Development and Environmental Governance of CIDEG of Tsinghua University.
Xiaoli Lv
Xiaoli Lu (PhD Utrecht University) is Associate Professor at Tsinghua University's School of Public Policy and Management, and Associate Director at Tsinghua's Center for Crisis Management Research. Lu has published widely on topics of crisis and disaster management, and organizational issues. His most recent book is Managing uncertainty in crisis: exploring the impact of institutionalization on organizational sense making. He serves on the editorial board of the journal Risk, Hazards & Crisis in Public Policy and Journal of Risk, Disaster & Crisis Research (in Chinese). He is also the founder of the China Crisis Management Website , and the co-founder of the Youth Sub-forum and Summer School affiliated to the Forum of Fifty on Emergency Management.
