Global Workshop on Climate Change and Urban Resilience: Cities’ Response to Disasters and Extreme Weather Events

Prof. Wang is Vice President of Beijing Normal University and Founding Dean of the School of National Safety and Emergency Management.  Prof. Wang is an expert in disaster assessment and risk management. He serves as an expert committee member of National Commission for Disaster Reduction and the executive deputy head of the Technical Team of the Leading Group Office of the State Council’s First National Comprehensive Survey of Natural Disaster Risks. He also led the national key R&D project and served as expert team head of disaster assessment for recent major disasters. He obtained his Bachler’s degree in Tsinghua University (Civil Engineering) and Ph.D. in University of Maryland (Structural Engineering). He has done much original research in the areas of major disaster assessment, risk modeling and analysis, climate change and its impact on socio-economic system.

Yoonhee Kim is the Practice Manager for Urban, Disaster Risk Management and Land (East Asia Region) within the Urban, Disaster Risk Management, Resilience and Land Global Practice at the World Bank, effective July 2023. She brings a wealth of expertise as the former Lead Urban Specialist and Program Leader for Sustainable Development (SD) in China, Mongolia and Korea at the World Bank, where she coordinates the SD programs consisting of environment, natural resources and blue economy, water, social sustainability and inclusion, urban, resilience and land, and agriculture and food. Prior to assuming the role of SD Program Leader in July 2020, she worked more than 13 years at the Bank as an Urban Specialist in a number of countries in South Asia (SAR) and Latin America and the Caribbean Regions (LAC), where she led multi-sectoral and complex lending operations and policy dialogue on urban housing, local government support, and green and sustainable municipal infrastructure. She also led and participated in a number of publications on urbanization review, housing policy, and municipal service delivery. Yoonhee has a B.A. in political science from Yonsei University, Korea, and graduate degrees in international economics from Johns Hopkins SAIS and in urban economics and policy from the University of Maryland.  

ATTY. LESLEY Y. CORDERO is a Senior Disaster Risk Management Specialist at the World Bank based in Singapore. She is managing a 2.5-billion-dollar Disaster Risk Management program in the Philippines and East Asia. She worked on innovative policies and instruments such as recovery frameworks; adaptive social protection measures; resilient infrastructure program; local government catastrophe risk insurance; contingent financing facility for climate and disasters; and sustainable, inclusive, and resilient tourism.

Mainstreaming the DRM agenda, Lesley is currently leading the implementation of the $500 million DRM and Climate standby loan facility to support the Government’s response and recovery efforts for recent disasters. She also worked on various DRM projects in Vietnam, Myanmar, Indonesia, China, and the Fiji Islands. On Fragility, Conflict and Violence, Lesley co-led the support for the Marawi Post-Conflict Recovery Program.

Lesley also served as an Undersecretary at the Office of the President of the Republic of the Philippines. She coordinated the disaster recovery efforts of the Government for Typhoons Bopha in 2012 and Haiyan in 2013. Lesley served as Undersecretary at the Presidential Communications Operations Office (PCOO) in 2011 and a Commissioner at the National Youth Commission in the Philippines in 2010.

Lesley has a Juris Doctor of Laws degree at the Ateneo de Manila University School of Law, and a master’s degree in National Security Administration at the National Defense College of the Philippines. She is an Adjunct Faculty at the Asian Institute of Management (AIM). She was awarded as one of The Outstanding Young Men (TOYM) of the Philippines in 2020. 

Dr. Cynthia Rosenzweig is a former Professor in the Department of Environmental Science at Barnard College. At NASA GISS, she heads the Climate Impacts Group, whose mission is to investigate the interactions of climate (both variability and change) on systems and sectors important to human well-being.

Dr. Rosenzweig is co-director of the Urban Climate Change Research Network (UCCRN) and co-editor of the UCCRN Assessment Reports on Climate Change and Cities (ARC3). Dr. Rosenzweig is a co-founder and co-leader of the Agricultural Model Intercomparison and Improvement Project (AgMIP).

Dr. Rosenzweig was the Coordinating Lead Author of the Food Security Chapter for the IPCC Special Report on Climate Change and Land and the Coordinating Lead Author on observed climate change impacts for the IPCC Working Group II Fourth Assessment Report.

Maria Dombrov’s work specifically focuses on understanding the implications that climate change presents to cities and their metropolitan regions worldwide. She is the Coordinator for the Urban Climate Change Research Network (UCCRN), and she works very closely with Dr. Cynthia Rosenzweig and Dr. Bill Solecki, both highly accomplished and innovative scientists.

Ebru Gencer is an urban risk and resilience specialist with over 20 years of experience in research, knowledge, and strategic policy development in disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation, and urban development. She is a Senior Urban Resilience Adviser at the World Bank, an Adjunct Associate Professor of Architecture and Urban Planning at Columbia University, and an Associate Editor of the Progress in Disaster Science Journal. Previously, she was the Co-Chair of the Urban Planning Advisory Group to the UN Secretary General's Special Representative for DRR and a Steering Committee member of the Making Cities Resilient Campaign. Ebru Gencer holds a Ph.D. in Urban Planning from Columbia University.

Shiqiang Du is a full professor at the School of Environmental and Geographical Sciences at Shanghai Normal University, China. He received his PhD degree in 2013 from Beijing Normal University, China, for his research on quantitative analyses of relationships between urbanization and hydrological processes. He worked at KU Leuven, Belgium, between 2011 and 2013 and at the Institute for Environmental Studies (IVM), Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands, as a guest scholar. His specializations and research interests include spatial analyses and modeling, floodplain development and restoration, hydrological modeling, and flood risk adaptation. On these topics, he has published more than 30 papers in international peer-reviewed journals, including Global Environmental Change and other Elsevier journals. He is currently leading projects on flood exposure dynamics and climate change adaptation, funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the National Key Research and Development Program of China.

Mr. Alexander Fekete has been a Professor of Risk and Crisis Management at TH Köln – University of Applied Sciences in Cologne, Germany, since 2012. His research includes disaster risk management, social vulnerability and resilience, critical infrastructure, and civil protection. He is a member of the Development Team of the Knowledge-Action-Networks for Emergent Risks and Extreme Events (Risk-KAN) of Future Earth. He is a speaker of the Working Group Natural Hazards / Natural Risks of the German Association of Geographers (AG NGNR) and a Steering Board member of the German Digital Society for the Promotion of Social Media and Technology (DGSMtech e.V.).

Alexander Fekete previously worked from 2009-2012 as a Project Officer at the German Federal Office of Civil Protection and Disaster Assistance in the field of Critical Infrastructure Protection (BBK). From 2005 to 2009, he was a Research Scholar at the United Nations University – Institute for Environment and Human Security (UNU-EHS), conducting research on social vulnerability to floods and climate change adaptation. As a consultant, he worked for WHO, the German Technical Cooperation (GTZ), and the German Committee for Disaster Reduction (DKKV). He has conducted fieldwork, workshops, and lectures in Armenia, Iran, Japan, Kenya, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Switzerland, and the USA. Alexander Fekete holds a diploma degree in Geography from the University of Würzburg, a doctorate (Dr.-Ing.) from the University of Bonn, and a Habilitation at the University of Würzburg.

Chris Hetkämper is a Research Associate in the Team Risk and Crisis Management at the Institute of Rescue Engineering and Civil Protection (TH Köln – University of Applied Sciences) in Germany. His main areas of expertise and interest are critical infrastructures, risk and crisis management, and the potential of applying geographic information systems as a planning tool in disaster risk management. Beyond his studies and work at the Institute of Rescue Engineering and Civil Protection, he has been a volunteer firefighter since 2014.

Prof. Dilanthi Amaratunga is a leading international expert in disaster resilience with an extensive academic career. Currently, she is leading the University of Huddersfield, UK’s Global Disaster Resilience Centre. She is placed among the global top 2% of influential scientists, according to the report of “Composite Citation Metrics” by Elsevier BV Netherlands and Stanford University, USA. In 2019, she won the prestigious Newton Prize, which recognises the best research and innovation projects that socially and economically impacted Indonesia and the UK from 2016 to 2019.

 She has project managed to successfully complete a large number of international research projects (over £ 20 million), generating significant research outputs and outcomes. To date, she has produced over 500 publications, refereed papers, and reports, and has made over 100 keynote speeches in over 40 countries. Among many leadership roles, she is the joint chief editor of the SCOPUS indexed International Journal of Disaster Resilience in the Built Environment. She is a member of the European Commission and UNDRR’s European Science & Technology Advisory Group, a Member of the UNDRR Expert Group on Principles for Resilient Infrastructure, a Member of the UNDRR Making Cities Resilient 2030 (MCR2030) Regional Coordination Committee for Europe, Steering Committee Member of the UK Alliance for Disaster Research (UKADR), and an expert member of the UN Women’s, “Women’s Resilience to Disasters Programme”. She is a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS), a Fellow of The Royal Geographical Society, and a Fellow and a Chartered Manager of the Chartered Management Institute, UK. More details about her experiences can be read here: www.dilanthiamaratunga.net

Frederico holds a Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from the University of Canterbury in New Zealand, a master’s degree in Transports from the University of Brasilia in Brazil, and a Civil Engineering degree from the Catholic University of Goiás in Brazil. He also conducted post-doctorate studies in Urban Management and Risk & Disaster Management at Kyoto University in Japan. Frederico has international experience in disaster management and humanitarian logistics, including research on recent disasters in the Tohoku Region (2011 Great East Japan Earthquake) and the 2011 Christchurch Earthquake in New Zealand. He served as an Assistant Lecturer at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand and as a consultant at CEFTRU (Human Resources Formation Center on Transportation), founded by JICA and Brazil’s Ministry of Transport, before joining the World Bank as a Disaster Risk Management Specialist in July 2012. Currently, Fred leads the Global Program on Resilient Infrastructure (GPRI) with a specific focus on the transport sector and urban resilience.

Rafael Schadeck is a Civil Engineer who graduated from the Federal University of Santa Catarina, where he also obtained a Master's degree in 2004. He has been working on disaster risk management for the last 20 years as a researcher and consultant in the public sector. Between 2011 and 2013, he headed the Disaster Minimization Department and the National Center for Risk and Disaster Management of the National Secretariat of Civil Defense. He is currently a researcher and Project Technical Coordinator at CEPED

Dr. YANG Saini is a professor at Beijing Normal University. She got her bachelor's and master's degrees from Southeast University and her Ph.D. degree from the University of Maryland. Her research interests include risk assessment and emergency management. She is the PI of more than twenty research projects and has published more than 100 papers in academic journals, including Nature Climate Change and Nature Communications. She is a member of the expert committee of the National Disaster Reduction Commission and a member of the Asia-Pacific Science and Technology Advisory Group of the United Nations Disaster Risk Reduction. She also serves as the editorial board member of several international academic journals.

Rajib Shaw is a professor at the Graduate School of Media and Governance of Keio University, Japan. He is co-founder of a Delhi-based social entrepreneur startup, Resilience Innovation Knowledge Academy (RIKA), and chair of the United Nations Science Technology Advisory Group (STAG) for disaster risk reduction. His specialization is disaster risk governance, urban resilience, climate change adaptation, and emerging disaster and climate change technologies. He is the recipient of the Pravasi Bhartiya Samman Award (PBSA) of 2021 in the Education Sector from the President of India. He also received United Nations Sasakawa Award for disaster risk reduction as a lifetime achievement and for his contribution to global disaster resilience initiatives.

Dr. Shengnan Wu received her Master's degree from Durham University and her Ph.D. from the Institute of Geographic Sciences and Natural Resources Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences. She currently holds the position of Associate Professor at the Center of Emergency Management, Chongqing School of Public Service in China. Her primary research focus is disaster risk reduction, specifically emphasizing risk management and policy innovation. Dr. Wu employs an interdisciplinary approach that draws from both natural and social sciences perspectives. She is one of the IRDR's young scientists and has contributed to multiple UN reports. Additionally, she has taken the lead and actively participated in several national and provincial research projects, resulting in the publication of more than 20 papers.

Eleni "Lenio" Myrivili is the Global Chief Heat Officer of UN-Habitat and the Atlantic Council’s Arsht-Rock Resilience Center. She’s working to build heat resilience in cities around the world. Myrivili, who is a senior advisor and a senior fellow at the Arsht-Rock Resilience Center, recently received the Lawrence C. Nussdorf Urban Leadership Prize and became an IUR Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. She is also currently appointed to the EU Mission Board for Adaptation at the European Commission.

Myrivili was elected to city government (2014 to 2019) and was appointed Athens’ Deputy Mayor for Urban Nature, Urban Resilience, and Climate Adaptation. Myrivili also served as Chief Resilience Officer and then as Chief Heat Officer for the City of Athens helping establish Athens’ lead in international urban climate adaptation responses. Upon completion of her term in city government, she became a resident Loeb Fellow (2019-2020) at Harvard University, contracted as an urban expert by the World Bank, and co-chaired the Steering Committee of the Resilient Cities Network.

A recognized voice in Heat Resilience, Eleni Myrivili, was invited to deliver a TED talk Global on her vision, in March 2022. She has been featured in many prominent international media, including the New York Times, and made Politico’s 28 list of most influential Europeans for 2022. Myrivili was also chosen as one of the people who helped shape science in 2023 by Nature’s 10. She held a tenured position at the University of the Aegean, was the host of a National Public Television documentary series on sustainable living and holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Columbia University.

Deputy Director of the Low Carbon Eco-Planning Research Center at Guangzhou Urban Planning & Design Survey Research Institute. She is a senior engineer and a registered urban and rural planner with 15 years of experience in planning design and research. Her main areas of expertise include low-carbon and sustainable planning, eco-city planning, wind-heat environment, and climate adaptation research.