At ARU we've pledged to incorporate sustainability into every aspect of our University’s conduct and administration - from our formal and informal curriculum, to student life and activities, and through our sustainability research and the impacts of our campuses. Our Sustainability Pledge

Join us across two FREE jam-packed days of international speakers in the resilience space. They will share their research and experience in three key areas: Cultural Heritage Resilience, Healthcare resilience and Infrastructure Resilience.

This two day annual conference is organised by ARU’s Sustainable Futures Research Theme, providing an excellent opportunity to connect with international professionals in these fields, establish new partnerships, and share your own experiences and best practices. With the increasing frequency and severity of extreme events, it has become essential to share knowledge of building resilient systems and communities that can withstand and recover from the effects of extreme events.

We look forward to welcoming you to this informative and engaging event!

For any questions please contact: SustainableFutures@aru.ac.uk

Wednesday 21 June 2023- Lab002

Session 1- 8:30-13:00

Cultural Heritage Resilience

-Professor Jigna Desai

“Engaging with Cultural Heritage for a Sustainable Future: Thoughts on Equity, Agency and Proximity”

Professor Jigna Desai is founder and head of the Center for Heritage Conservation at CEPT University, one of the expert heritage bodies that advises Archaeological Survey of India (ASI). In this role, she collaborates on pioneering international research projects, engages with government, city administration, industries, and communities to inform best practices and policies for heritage conservation. Her overseas work includes heritage monitoring missions, evaluations and advice for International Council for Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), World Heritage Committee and World Monuments Fund. She is also a Visiting Professor at Nottingham Trent University, and has written extensively on architecture, heritage conservation and world heritage issues in India. Her most notable book is, Equity in Heritage Conservation, The Case of Ahmedabad (Routledge, 2019).

-Dr Paola Di Giuseppantonio Di Franco

The role of ‘temporary’ dwellings for community resilience in time of displacement: the case of Italian earthquakes.

Dr Paola Di Giuseppantonio Di Franco is Senior Lecturer in Heritage and Digital Humanities at the University of Essex and UKRI Future Leader Fellow for REPLACE, a programme of research that aims to increase community resilience after natural disasters by advancing our understanding of the socio-cultural role 3D technologies can play in rebuilding a sense of place, thus enabling communities to prepare for, respond to, recover from, mitigate the effects, and adapt to natural disasters. She is an expert member of the International Scientific Committee of Risk Preparedness (ICORP) and ICOMOS UK Digital Technology National Committee, as well as affiliated member of the Cambridge Heritage Research Centre (CHRC) at the University of Cambridge, and Associate Editor of the Journal on Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH).

- Professor Eray Çayli

“Surviving Violence as Disaster Preparedness in a racialized Istanbul neighbourhood”

Eray is Professor of Human Geography with a focus on violence and security in the Anthropocene at University of Hamburg. His work interweaves geography, anthropology, and material/visual culture. Having relocated to Hamburg in February 2023, here Eray continues to teach on topics he previously spent more than a decade teaching at UK universities such as LSE and UCL: urban and architectural histories of disaster and conflict, violence's visuality, and material/embodied politics of racism and racialization. His ongoing research explores the ways histories of political violence bear upon discourses and practices surrounding climate change, environmental disaster and resilience in Turkey, its environs, and their diasporas.

- Professor Elizabeth Brabec

Displacement: How cultural heritage can support resilience

Elizabeth is Director of the Center for Heritage and Society at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA. Her current research focuses on climate-induced migration, and the role of heritage in building resilience to natural disasters and mitigating the trauma of human movement and displacement. She is the editor of the Taylor & Francis journal, Heritage & Society, which focuses on the role of heritage in contemporary life. She also serves as the Secretary General of the ISCCL (International Scientific Committee on Cultural Landscapes), a scientific committee of ICOMOS (International Council on Monuments and Sites) and is a member of the ICOMOS Climate Change and Cultural Heritage Working Group.

Session 2- 13:00-16:00

Healthcare Resilience

- Professor Virginia Murray

“Opportunities and Challenges for Public Health Preparedness and Response and the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030”

FFPH, FRCP, FFOM, FRCPath qualified in medicine. Consultant in Global Disaster Risk Reduction; Vice-chair UNDRR Scientific and Technical Advisory Group (STAG), and Member of IRDR scientific committee. Over 40 years of experience in hazards and risk reduction. She was Director of the Chemical Incident Response Service from 1995, Head of HPA’s Extreme Events and Health Protection section. Coordinator and Lead Author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Special Report on Managing the Risks of Extreme Events and Disasters to Advance Climate Change Adaptation. UK Government member on the UNDRR Scientific and Technical Advisory Group since 2008 and she is also a member of the HFA Mid Term Review Advisory Group, representing science, for the UNDRR.

- Professor Amber Mehmood

“Reimagining disaster management from public health lenses"

With a professional experience of more than 20 years, Dr. Mehmood has extensive academic, technical and professional expertise in planning, implementing and monitoring and evaluation of health care programs. She is a trained surgeon and public health researcher with a special interest in health systems strengthening, implementation science, quality of health services, and monitoring and evaluation of care interventions.

- Professor Dan Barnett

“Psychological perspectives of health workers toward disaster response and recovery efforts: Current applied research insights and future directions”

MD, MPH, Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Health and Engineering at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health (JHSPH), USA, where he has joint appointments in the Department of Health Policy and Management, and the Department of Health, Behavior and Society; and is on the Core faculty of the Office of Public Health Practice & Training. His research interests include evidence-based approaches to organizational enhancement of public health emergency preparedness and healthcare workforce resilience in the context of public health emergencies and disasters. He received his MD degree from The Ohio State University College of Medicine and Public Health; his MPH degree was earned at The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and he is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins General Preventive Medicine Residency Program.

- Professor Kurtulus Aciksari

"The value of multidisciplinary coordination in disasters: The case of 2023 Kahramanmaras Earthquake“

Emergency Physician and former Head of Emergency Department of the Istanbul Medeniyet University Goztepe Prof. Dr. Suleyman Yalcin City Hospital. Dr Aciksari is a member of the emergency response coordination team of the 2023 Kahramanmasras Earthquake. He is responsible for the emergency medicine residents training programme, dissertation and research projects in emergency departments. He has a substantial professional and research track record where he worked in various healthcare authorities and conducted research following the Marmara 1999 and Van 2011 earthquakes. Kurtulus is involved in several international research projects. Advisor to the President of the Turkish Red Crescent and Editor of the Turkish Red Crescent Journal of Medicine.

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Thursday 22 June- Yst218

Session 3- 8:30-13:00

Infrastructure Resilience

-Dr Gavin Smith

Infrastructure Challenges and Opportunities as Understood in the Disaster Recovery and Climate Change Adaptation Context: Lessons Learned and Not Learned

Gavin Smith is a Professor in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at North Carolina State University. His research focuses on hazard mitigation, disaster recovery, climate change adaptation, and the integration of research and practice. Educational efforts include leading a graduate certificate in disaster resilient policy, engineering, and design. Dr. Smith has written the text Planning for Post-Disaster Recovery: A Review of the United States Disaster Assistance Framework (Island Press, 2011) and served as the co-editor of the text Adapting to Climate Change: Lessons from Natural Hazards Planning (Springer, 2014) as well as writing numerous peer reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and practice-oriented reports.

-Professor Masakatsu Miyajima

Multi hazard resilience of drinking water pipeline

Professor Emeritus of Earthquake Engineering at Kanazawa University, Former Director of the Earthquake Laboratory and Disaster Mitigation (Kanazawa University, Japan), President of the International Consortium on Geo-Disaster Reduction, and Vice President, International Society of Lifeline and Infrastructure Earthquake Engineering. He has over 40 years of experience in the experiment and analysis of critical lifeline infrastructure subjected to earthquakes and has been involved in major developments of theory of seismic analysis and experiments of damage mechanism of buried pipelines. During these 40 years, Professor Miyajima published hundreds of papers on the experimental and numerical studies of critical lifeline infrastructure subject to earthquakes.

-Professor Carmine Galasso

Dynamic cities, dynamic natural-hazard risk: representing urban changes in risk-informed infrastructure decision making

Carmine Galasso is a Professor of Catastrophe Risk Engineering in the University College London’s Department of Civil, Environmental & Geomatic Engineering (CEGE), UK. His research focuses on developing and applying probabilistic and statistical methods and computational/digital tools for catastrophe risk modelling and disaster risk reduction. He is investigating risks to building portfolios and infrastructure exposed to multiple natural hazards, including earthquakes, strong wind, and flooding, with particular emphasis on low-income countries and community-based infrastructure. Carmine has authored >200 peer-reviewed papers; his research is funded by the UK Research Councils, the European Commission, the British Council, the Motorola Solution Foundation, and the Willis Research Network, among others. He is an Associate Editor for the International Journal of Disaster Risk Reduction; Frontiers in Earth Science/Geohazards & Georisks; Journal of Earthquake Engineering & Nature Communications Engineering; and the Executive Editor for Operations for Seismica (McGill University), Diamond Open Access journal in seismology and earthquake science.

Sustainable Futures Conference: Resilience to Extreme events