Recordings from the virtual conference showcases emerging research on how Asian cities are being impacted by climate change and identifies the opportunities for collaboration to transform towards net zero economies.
The organisers of the virtual conference included Hokkaido University, Nanjing University, National University of Singapore and TERI School of Advanced Studies. The conference covers a number of thematic areas including successful case studies of collaborative works between universities and local governments, critical assessment approaches of vulnerabilities in urban systems and evidence-led recommendations on capability building in urban climate resilience.
Schedule
Collaboration between universities and the region
This seminar will include a series of presentations on collaborative works between universities and local governments, which is making full use of the characteristics of local environments, toward zero-carbon society.
- Assoc. Prof. Fujio Ohnishi, Arctic Research Center, Hokkaido University, His specialization includes political science, international relations, global governance and sustainability.
- Assoc. Prof. Tomomichi Kato is an Associate Professor in the Research Faculty of Agriculture at Hokkaido University, whose research interests focus on modeling and remote-sensing of carbon cycle in terrestrial ecosystems. Presentation Title (Provisional): Measurement and modeling of carbon uptake by land ecosystem.
- Mr. Kunihiko Asamura, Director of Policy Planning Department, City Development Policy Planning Bureau, Sapporo City Government. Presentation Title (Provisional): Aiming for a zero-carbon city “environmental capital, SAPPORO”
- Assoc. Professor Naoyuki Mikami, Institute for the Advancement of Higher Education, Hokkaido University. Presentation Title (Provisional): Co-creation of Public Deliberation toward Zero Carbon Society: Climate Citizens’ Assembly in Sapporo.
- Kylie Goodwin is a PhD Candidate in the Sustainability Assessment Program, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, UNSW Sydney. Her research focuses on the absolute sustainability of cities.
- Ariel Toh is a Director of the Marcharh Initiative and an Interdisciplinary researcher with a major in sustainable energy and systems engineering. Educator in sustainability science, worked in more than 40 full abstracts, whitepaper, conference paper indexed in proceedings in the broad area of solving problems in sustainability.
Research Seminar: Diversity in strategies among regions
This seminar aims to initialize the potential collaboration on urban climate resilience research among universities at regions, by sharing the research activities and experiences on tackling local environmental risks and vulnerabilities in urban systems.
- Assoc. Prof John Chye is an Associate Professor at the Department of Architecture at National University of Singapore, director of the Centre for Ageing Research in the Environment (CARE). His research interests focus on Climate resilience and age-friendly environments.
- Assoc. Prof Siu-Kit Lau, Eddie is an associate Professor at the Department of Architecture at National University of Singapore. Dr. Lau’s research focuses on urban acoustic design.
- Dr Mei Shuojun is a Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Architecture at National University of Singapore. His research interests focus on urban microclimate modelling and numerical simulation.
- Mr Pradeep Attavar Alva is a PhD student at the Department of Architecture at National University of Singapore. Mr Alva’s research focuses on digital twin and the application on energy simulation
Research Seminar: Natural and technological solutions to mitigating climate change in cities
The primary theme of this seminar is to analyze the current emission levels of Chinese cities and discuss the natural and technological solutions to set the cities on the low-carbon trajectory.
- Dr. Haikun Wang is a Professor in the School of Atmospheric Sciences of Nanjing University. He will give the opening presentation about Carbon Emissions in the Cities of China.
- Dr. Huilin Chen is a Professor in the School of Atmospheric Sciences of Nanjing University. The title of his talk is Observation-based Quantification and Verification of Greenhouse Gas Emissions in Urban Areas.
- Dr. Zhi Gao is an Associate Professor in the School of Architecture and Urban Planning of Nanjing University. The title of his talk is Investigation of typical residential block typologies and their impact on pedestrian-level microclimate in the summer of Nanjing, China.
- Professor Akira Ishibashi is leading Nanostructure Physics Lab. in Research Institute for Electronic Science, Hokkaido University. In 2006, he started Hokkaido Univ. venture company, C’sTEC Corporation based upon CUSP (clean unit system platform). His main targets are high-efficiency concentrator solar-cells and versatile clean systems. The title of his talk is Lifting off spatial functional degeneracies in solar cells and clean rooms, where does it lead us for Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)?
Keynote Speech: Capacity building in the higher education sector in Asia
Dr. Fawzia Tarannum presented a case study of their new plans to support UNEP in the establishment of an India focused sustainability network with the aim to build stronger educational opportunities across the 37.4 million youth who are presently enrolled in higher education programs across India. Dr. Tarannum is a PhD, Fulbright Hubert H. Humphrey Fellow and Assistant Professor at the Coca-Cola Department of Regional Water Studies in TERI School of Advanced Studies.
Research Seminar: The balance between the natural and urban environments in our cities
This seminar examines the challenge of rapid urbanization, growing motorization, slum formation and infrastructure management.
- Mythili Madhavan is a Research Associate at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS), Bangalore. Her research interests include climate adaptation, disaster risk and resilience and energy justice. She currently works on projects such as Recovery with Dignity, ReSET, and is a Contributing Author on the IPCC’s Assessment Report 6 Working Group II chapter on Asia.
- Dr Deepty Jain is an Assistant Professor at TERI School of Advanced Studies. Her area of specialization include low carbon mobility, built environment and transport. environment impacts. Deepty will be presenting ‘Built environment, air quaility and transport behavior linkages in Indian cities’.
- Dr. Paul Osmond, Associate Professor, UNSW Sydney. Paul is the University’s representative to the Green Building Council of Australia, and sits on the editorial boards of the journals Urban Morphology, Urban Planning and Architecture.
- Mr Aditya Rahul is a senior research fellow at the department of architecture and planning, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee. His area of research is urban climate, exploring the potential of water body as an urban heat attenuation tool. Aditya is presenting ‘Analysing the potential of BGI as a climate resilience building tool’.
- Professor Joy Sen is a Professor of the Department of Architecture and Regional Planning, Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. His areas of research are Community and Regional Planning Analyses & Programming and Architecture and Planning Related Heritage Studies and Documentation. Joy is presenting ‘Lessons from INDIAN KNOWLEDGE SYSTEMS: Nirman tatha sthapatya Vidya’.
- Talat Munshi is working as Senior Advisor at UNEP DTU Partnership. Talat’s work and research is in climate change and cities in developing countries, particularly analysing the role of land use, transport and geo-information science in mitigation and adaptation.Previously, he has worked as an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Planning, CEPT University India, as Lecturer in Transport at Faculty of ITC, University of Twente Netherlands, at The Energy and Resource Institute (TERI), India and with Surat Municipal Corporation, India. He has experience in research and consulting work with countries in Africa, Asia and Europe on urban planning, transport and climate finance and has a significant number of published articles on these subjects.Talat is an engineer by training from CEPT University. He has a PhD from the University of Twente (UT) and a Master’s degree in Environmental Planning from CEPT University and in Urban Infrastructure Management from the faculty of ITC, UT. Talat is presenting on ‘Smart Cities and Climate Change’.
Closing Speech: Professor Shaleen Singhal
Professor Singhal is the Dean of Research and Partnerships at TERI SAS. He is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy, UK and had been a Visiting Fulbright Fellow at Yale University, US. He is an architect planner with globally awarded (Emerald/EFMD) PhD from Ulster University. He has over 24 years of research, consultancy and teaching experience working in areas relating to sustainable smart cities, climate change, sustainable consumption, regeneration, public policy and planning.
Opening keynote presentation by Professor Deo Prasad
Distinguished Professor (Scientia) Deo Prasad AO FTSE is now an international authority and recognised as a national leader in the field of sustainable buildings and cities and among the leading advocates for sustainability in Australia, with his contributions having been widely acknowledged at all levels of government and professions in Australia. Elected as a Fellow of the Royal Australian Institute of Architects in 1991, he has been a highly influential, driving force for sustainable design in both academia and professional practise and in 2006 he received the Royal Australian Institute of Architect’s National Education Award for contribution to ‘sustainability education, research and design’.
Joint presentation by the International Association of Urban Climate
This event will describe the vision of the International Association of Urban Climate, as well as the contribution of urban climate research at different scales around the globe to mitigating and adapting to climate challenges in cities. Additionally, active engagement with various local and international institutions will be detailed, such that effective, integrated, and multidisciplinary solutions are developed for climate-resilient and just cities.
- Professor Nigel Tapper is the president of the International Association of Urban Climate and an Emeritus Professor at the School of Earth Atmosphere and Environment, Monash University. Nigel is involved in an expert panel on infrastructure and settlement of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), and the Cities as Water Supply Catchments program, helping to bring down the mercury in our urban areas and the planet as a whole.
- Dr. Negin Nazarian is a Scientia Senior Lecturer at UNSW Built Environment, Associate Investigator at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Climate Extremes, and CFRC fellow at the City Futures Research Centre. Negin is an urban climatologist evaluating the ways the built environment interacts with the climate, and in return, how urban dwellers are affected by this interaction.
Climate Research Pitch Competition
Phd candidates were provided three minutes to give a compelling presentation on their thesis topic and its significance, the competition encourages research candidates to consolidate their ideas and crystallise their research discoveries.
