Landslide Risk Management in Hong Kong - Experience in the Past and Planning for the Future

Landslides ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 243-247
Author(s):  
W. K. Pun ◽  
P. W. K. Chung ◽  
T. K. C. Wong ◽  
H. W. K. Lam ◽  
L. A. Wong
Keyword(s):  
Risk Management ◽  
Hong Kong ◽  
Landslide Risk ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future

The International Position of Hong Kong

1983 ◽  
Vol 95 ◽  
pp. 456-468 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lucian W. Pye
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Colonial Rule ◽  
Usual Practice ◽  
Standard Methods ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
History Of ◽  
Rule Set

Uncertainty about Hong Kong's future has been aggravated by lack of precedent. When before has there been an established date of termination of colonial rule set by treaty? Even more confounding is that the history of the Crown Colony provides so little guidance as to its future. The usual practice in facing uncertainty is to look to the past to chart trends, identify propensities and make projections. All of these standard methods are, however, to no avail with respect to the future of Hong Kong. We are left to the mercy of that purported ancient Chinese saying, “Prediction is exceedingly difficult, especially with respect to the future.”

Learning from the past for strategic decision-making in climate risk management: Connecting historic and future adaptation pathways

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Thaler ◽  
Philipp Babcicky ◽  
Christoph Clar ◽  
Thomas Schinko ◽  
Sebastian Seebauer
Keyword(s):  
Risk Management ◽  
Disaster Risk ◽  
Disaster Risk Management ◽  
Strategic Decision ◽  
Climate Risk ◽  
Economic Damage ◽  
The Past ◽  
Climate Risk Management ◽  
The Future

<p>Hydro-metrological events cause substantial economic damage and social disruption in our society to date. These climate-related risks will become even more severe in the future, driven by changes in the frequency and magnitude of natural hazard events, an increasing exposure of buildings or infrastructure, as well as vulnerability and resilience developments of residents and businesses. Although these long-term developments are of major social and economic relevance, decisions in disaster risk management and their (potential) impacts are typically assessed as singular events and potential alternative solutions, which have not been considered, are out of scope. Recent research therefore suggests to employ the concept of iterative climate risk management (CRM), in order to align disaster risk management and climate change adaptation policy and practice. This is supposed to increase the awareness of how complex and dynamic the challenge of comprehensively tackling climate-related risks is.</p><p>Pathways aims to fill this gap by analysing the long-term development of past and future decisions. The arenas in which these decisions are made are characterised by (1) competing interests from various policy areas, (2) ad-hoc decisions often taking precedence over strategic planning for long-term CRM, and (3) previous decisions providing carry-over, follow-up or creating even lock-in effects for later decisions. Focusing on two climate-adaptation regions in Austria (so-called KLAR!-regions), Pathways paints a comprehensive picture of how local adaptation pathways were developed in the past, how these pathways led to specific decisions at specific points in time, and which impacts these choices had on community development with respect to the choices and pathways not taken. Pathways learns from the past to inform the future with the aim to provide capacity building at the local level. By understanding how earlier decisions enabled or constrained the later decisions, pathways offers policy guidance for making robust decisions in local CRM.</p><p>Pathways applies a mixed-method approach to integrate quantitative and qualitative social science research methods and to triangulate the research objectives from different perspectives. Semi-structured interviews with key CRM actors at various levels of government, geo-spatial analysis, secondary analysis of census data and archival research jointly inform the reconstruction of past decision points and related pathways. This approach allows to test, compare, confirm, and control the collected data and the interpreted results from different perspectives, while avoiding narrow, oversimplifying explanations. Building on the lessons learnt from the past, future pathways are co-designed with local stakeholders in Formative Scenario workshops. Pathways restricts its scope to climate-related risks from extreme hydro-meteorological events and geological mass movements, such as riverine floods and pluvial torrents, mud and debris flow, landslides or avalanches. This risk domain requires governance structures for immediate response to the disaster as well as for prevention and relief/reconstruction. Pathways aims to improve the knowledge base for respective governance efforts.</p>

20 Years of Doctoral Research Studies in Design in Hong Kong

2017 ◽  
pp. 227-244
Author(s):  
Kin Wai Michael Siu ◽  
Giovanni J. Contreras Garcia
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Design Education ◽  
Role Model ◽  
New Era ◽  
Research Education ◽  
Doctoral Research ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Quality Design ◽  
Research Studies

For the past 50 years, the School of Design of The Hong Kong Polytechnic University has been a pioneer in nurturing design education in Asia. It is also one of the first schools in the region to grant PhDs in “Design” serving as a role model for other universities in the region. Since the 1990s, the school has produced tens of PhD degree holders across different design specialties. However, as times change and knowledge plays a more fundamental role in the economy, the ability to produce quality design researchers, capable of creating deep and specific insights will become fundamental for the future of design in the region. In this chapter we review the emergence, growth and future of the PhD programme at the school of design of the Hong Kong Polytechnic University against a landscape of challenges of doctoral research education, particularly in the case of design. We also discuss the strategies used in the past, present and future, as the school moves into a new era of economic and geopolitical scenarios in the 21 century.

Risk and the Regulation of Uncertainty in International Law

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Risk Assessment ◽  
Risk Management ◽  
International Law ◽  
Expert Knowledge ◽  
Risk Regulation ◽  
The Past ◽  
Existential Risk ◽  
The Future ◽  
Legal Regimes ◽  
The Way

Increasingly, international legal arrangements imagine future worlds, or create space for experts to articulate how the future can be conceptualized and managed. With the increased specialization of international law, a series of functional regimes and sub-regimes has emerged, each with their own imageries, vocabularies, expert knowledge and rules to translate our hopes and fears for the future into action in the present. At issue in the development of these regimes are not just competing predictions of the future based on what we know about what has happened in the past and what we know is happening in the present. Rather, these regimes seek to deal with futures about which we know very little or nothing at all; futures that are inherently uncertain and even potentially catastrophic; futures for which we need to find ways to identify, conceptualize, manage, and regulate risks the existence of which we can possibly only speculate about. This book explores how the future is imagined, articulated, and managed across various functional fields in international law. It explores how the future is construed in these various functional fields; how the costs of risk, risk regulation, risk assessment, and risk management are distributed in international law; the effect of uncertain futures on the subjects of international law; and the way in which international law operates when faced with catastrophic or existential risk. The contributions in this book will provide readers with a sound basis for making comparisons between the practices developed in different international legal regimes.

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