Synopsis

The Institute of Catastrophe Risk Management (ICRM) was launched by Nanyang Technological University in January 2010 with a vision to become Asia's leading research institute in catastrophe risk management. Since its launch, ICRM has conducted five Annual Symposia on various topics including Food and Water Security and Climate Change, Black Swan Events, Extreme Events in Asia Pacific, Financing Natural Catastrophes in Asia, and the Public-Private Partnership in Managing Catastrophe Events. This Sixth Annual Symposium will focus its attention to the evolution of megacities and special risks that are evolving due to such large concentration of people, infrastructure, economy and socio-political impacts. Managing those risks poses special challenges and innovative solutions.

Growth of megacities (population with 10 million or more) is relatively a modern trend. Whereas in 1950, there were only two megacities (New York and Tokyo), this number has increased to more than 25 by the year 2010. Two thirds of those twenty five are in Asia. This trend of increasing number of megacities in Asia is going to continue well into the 21st century. With this increase, the task for local, state and central governments, businesses, social and political bodies and citizens to manage a variety of risks that pose a threat is getting more and more complex.

The list of risks include socio-economic risk (crime, poverty), political risk, health related risk, environmental risk, risk due to climate change, terrorism risk, pandemic risk, quality of life risk and so on. The immense complexities of interplay between various risks and our understanding of those complexities are the challenges at hand. Risks in each of the megacities mutate and grow in specific ways for each of those cities. It is almost impossible to do proper justice to the whole landscape of risks in a single conference. Keeping this in mind, the Sixth Annual Symposium has the following theme:

"MegaCities of Asia and their Evolving Risks - Are these Risks Manageable?"

Due to the immensity of issues related to megacities, this symposium will focus on the following topics as sub-themes:

• Evolving Risk and Sustainability of Megacities
• Industry Perspectives
• Building Resilience
• Natural hazards and Megacities
• Terrorism and Pandemics
• Science and Paleo-Science of Natural Hazards

No single entity, private or public, can manage these risks. Multiple stakeholders and their alliances must be created to understand and manage those risks. Asia is the "region of megacities" and it is most appropriate that ICRM will focus on that problem and bring together experts from around Asia and the World. Through this Symposium, we hope to articulate current views, to provide insights into current work and prevailing ideas and to provide possible solutions for this most interesting and challenging landscape of risks.

Registration

We invite you to attend our Symposium and attendance is complimentary. Please fill in the attached RSVP and email to us at [email protected]

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