The Asian Conference on Disaster Response and Management

Hiroshima, Japan serves as an ideal setting  for academics, practitioners, policy-makers, first-responders and students who desire to share ideas, knowledge, research and experience in a forum of peaceful dialog and constructive outcomes.

This year marks the 4th anniversary of the devastating earthquake and tsunami that struck northern Japan on March 11, 2011. Subsequent to the twin natural disasters, the health and safety of Japan as well as the global community were faced with the nuclear meltdown at the Fukushima power plant — a human-made disaster on an epic and frightening scale.

What type of governance structures, management practices, technological innovations, legal agreements or policy tools can best bridge the needs-limitation gap in order to facilitate and accelerate disaster response and management? The rapid economic growth of the developing countries in Asia in  recent decades has added a new dimension to this process, by shifting the leverage of change from the West to the East. Designing infrastructure, products, enterprises and processes with disaster response and management in mind can have an enormous impact on environmental and social systems.

Under the theme of Breaking Barriers, this international, peer-reviewed conference is a call to academics and practitioners to join us from April 29 to May 1, 2015 in Japan’s ‘City of Peace’ for this timely and important discussion of disaster response and management.