Prof. Hirokazu Tatano is the vice-director of the Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI) and the head of the Research Division of Disaster Management for Safe and Secure Society, Kyoto University. He has served as the vice-president of the International Society of Integrated Disaster Risk Management (IDRiM Society) since 2010 and as the secretary-general of the Global Alliance of Disaster Research Institutes (GADRI) since 2015. He has carried out pioneering research on economic consequence analyses with a major focus on economic resilience to natural disasters at the levels of individual business, market, and regional economy. Another research focus is methodologies for integrated disaster risk management and governance. Through these academic activities, he contributes to establishing “implementation science” as a key research area for disaster risk reduction.
Prof. Paul Kovacs is the founder and executive director of the Institute for Catastrophic Loss Reduction at Western University, Canada. Since 1996 he has been a contributing author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the world’s leading forum for the study of climate issues. The Panel won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize “for their efforts to build up and disseminate greater knowledge about man-made climate change”. He is Canada’s leading authority on insurance and climate change and has been a contributing author to numerous international and Canadian reports on reducing the risk of loss from earthquakes, flood and severe wind. For more than 35 years, Paul has been a popular commentator on insurance, disaster safety and economic policy. He has written more than 200 publications and articles, and he is a passionate champion for insurance, disaster resilience and adaptation to climate extremes. He has worked in private industry, the public sector and academia. He is a co-chair of the Infrastructure and Housing Working Group of Canada’s Adaptation Platform, and he is alsoa co-chair of the Science and Technology Working Group of Canada’s Platform on Disaster Risk Reduction. In addition, he is a member of a number of boards and advisory panels. Paul is a proud husband and father, with a growing collection of bow ties.
Wilma James is a project activity coordinator at the Disaster Prevention Research Institute (DPRI), Kyoto University, Japan, and the Global Alliance of Disaster Research Institutes, which is currently hosted by the DPRI, Kyoto University. Prior to joining the DPRI, she has served at the United Nations University (UNU) for 25 years as an administrative coordinator of the Capacity Development programme and the UNU Institute for Advanced Studies in Tokyo, Japan. Apart from her administrative role, she was the focal point for more than 30 training courses under the capacity development programme. She also administratively coordinated and implemented training courses under the aegis of the United Network for Climate and Ecosystems Change Adaptation Research (UNCECAR) such as Building Resilience to Climate Change (BRCC) and Climate Change Downscaling and Adaptation (CCDA).