Focus on AsiaTwo events are planned to be held at the XXV IUGG General Assembly (Melbourne, Australia, 28 June to 7 July 2011):
The science and society are the partners to cope with natural hazards by integrating natural and social sciences, engineering, economic and industrial activities, public administration, policy making etc. They can even convert risk to opportunity. The Symposium will address major challenges in natural hazards research and risk analysis and present the ways for their solutions. Open Forum “Natural Hazards: From Risk to Opportunity by Partnership of Science and Society” will be an ICSU public forum. The actions undertaken by IRDR and ENHANS (see below) will be presented at first, followed by discussions addressing the following questions: (i) How natural and social sciences can integrate their knowledge for disaster reduction? (ii) How science and society can form partnership for disaster reduction? (iii) How science and society partnership can convert natural disaster risk to opportunity? (iv) What are the urgent issues of disaster risk in mega cities and regions under intensifying natural and social pressure? Scientists, public managers, policy makers and other stakeholders will be invited to present solutions to the problems, to indicate the potential barriers and break-troughs. The outcomes will be reflected in the next step actions of IRDR. The decade-long program “Integrated Research on Disaster Risk (IRDR)”, co-sponsored by the International Council for Science (ICSU), the International Social Sciences Council (ISSC) and the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UN-ISDR) started in 2009 and aims at curving losses by knowledge-based decision-making. The ENHANS Project was launched in 2010 by IUGG and supported by several ICSU Scientific Unions and Regional Offices, multi-national and intergovernmental organizations. ENHANS aims to (i) to improve understanding of critical phenomena associated with extreme natural events and to analyse impacts of the natural hazards on sustainable development of society; (ii) to promote studies on prediction of extreme events reducing predictive uncertainty and on natural hazards mitigation; to bring the issues into the political and economical policies; (iii) to disseminate knowledge and data on natural hazards for the advancement of research and education in general and especially in developing countries. Invited speakers
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