Urban areas face daunting environmental, economic and social challenges that have increased in scope in recent years, especially given climate change and globalization. At the same time, cities provide exciting opportunities for growth and revitalization of local and national economies. The interplay of these challenges and opportunities create important tasks for policymakers and researchers. This book provides a new horizon for exploring solutions to urban problems, especially water-related disasters in urban areas. It is of a cross-disciplinary nature offering both new concepts and practices that will help to promote communication between urban planning communities and water management professionals in order to integrate water-related disaster management into spatial planning.
Guangwei Huang moved from Shanghai to Tokyo for complete his higher education and obtained a PhD from the University of Tokyo. Passionate about water, he has studied various aspects, from fluid dynamics to water quality modeling and to integrated watershed science and management. A particular research focus in recent years has been flood risk and water quality deterioration in relation to different stages of urban development. A firm believer in the old Chinese saying: the person who manages water well can rule the world, he aims to provide innovative solutions to various water-related problems via cross-disciplinary initiatives. He was an associate professor at the University of Tokyo's Graduate School of Frontier Sciences; a professor for the Joint Educational Program between International Center for Water Hazard and Risk Management under the auspices of UNESCO and the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, Japan. Currently, he is a professor at the Graduate School of Global Environmental Studies and director of the Institute for Studies of the Global Environment, Sophia University, Japan.
Dr. Zhenjiang Shen currently is director of Joint International Lab SPSD between Fuzhou university and Kanazawa university, his research interests include policy-making support systems for planning and design. Dr. Shen is serving as vice director, Urban Big data Commission, Chinese Society of Urban Studies. He also served as commissioner of Information Technology Education of Architectural Institute of Japan, and was a member of Scientific Committee of City Planning Institute of Japan. He works as a joint member of Fudan University and PhD Instructor in Tsinghua University. Dr.Shen has published over 200 papers and published 5 books already with Springer, who is editor-in-chief of IRSPSD International indexed in SCOPUS and ESCI, and is General Director of International Community on Spatial Planning and Sustainable Development.
