As climate change and urban development are closely interlinked and often interact negatively, this edited volume takes Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC), Vietnam’s first mega-urban region as a case study to analyse its vulnerability to climate change and to suggest measures towards a more sustainable urban development. The book offers an overview on land use planning regarding the aspects of urban flooding, urban climate, urban energy and urban mobility as well as spatial views from the angle of urban planning such as the metropolitan level, the city, the neighbourhood and building level. It shows that to a significant degree, measures dealing with climate change can be taken from the toolbox of sustainable urban development and reflects how institutional structures need to change to enhance chances for implementation given socio-cultural and economic constraints. This is merged and integrated into a holistic perspective of planning recommendations, supporting the municipal government to increase its adaptive capacity. The authors are members of a German government funded research project on how to support HCMC’s municipal government to adapt to risks related to climate change.

Properly addressing a crisis requires more than just guesswork and a reaction; it requires a properly structured approach supported by good information. With the rapid evolution of information systems and information technology, including hardware, software, the internet, and communications capabilities, there are abundant opportunities to apply these technology capabilities and resources to support and improve responses to and management of crisis situations. Approaches to crisis response and management include the design, development, implementation, and application of systematic methodologies on how to respond, as well as how to apply information systems to enhance and extend responses to crises. Information Technology Applications for Crisis Response and Management provides a multi-disciplinary perspective on current and cutting-edge research exploring and extending our understanding of the use of information systems and information technology to support responses to crises of all kinds—accidental, intentional, and acts of nature. The chapters in this book focus on the design, development, implementation, use, and evaluation of information system technologies and methodologies to support crisis response and management, as well as technology management-related issues for crisis response and management. While highlighting technical, cognitive, organizational, and human-focused issues within the field, this book is ideal for policymakers, IT specialists, government officials, crisis response teams, managers, practitioners, researchers, academicians, and students interested in the use of information technology and information systems to support diverse types of crises.

This edited volume explores how success is conceptualized and represented in texts for young people in Asia. The essays in this collection examine how success for children relates to education, family, gender, race, class, community, and the nation. It answers the following questions: How is success for children represented in literature, cinema, and popular media? In what ways are these images grounded in the historical, political, and cultural contexts in which they are produced and consumed? How does childhood agency influence ideas about success in Asia? Highlighting the similarities and differences in how success is defined for children and young adults in Japan, South Korea, People’s Republic of China, Singapore, Taiwan, Indonesia, Vietnam, and India, this volume argues that success is an important keyword in the literary and cultural study of childhood in Asia.

Even with significant reductions of greenhouse gas emissions, a certain degree of climate change will inevitably occur. Adapting to climate change, then, will become a necessary step in reducing the vulnerability of many regions across the globe. This is especially true for urban areas where climate change has been shown to have particularly destabilizing effects. Through the identification and analysis of the most relevant impacts facing urban areas, this book makes clear the need to incorporate climate change concerns into the mainstream of local planning, governance and policy making practices. Adaptation as a workable concept within urban areas cannot be treated in isolation from the many pre-existing challenges facing cities. By offering numerous examples of ongoing adaptation programs and strategies across a wide range of contexts, the authors show the growing potential of cities in the fight against climate change. This book has its origins in a collection of papers originally presented at the Resilient Cities 2010 Congress in Bonn, Germany (May 2010), the first global forum on cities and adaptation to climate change, convened by ICLEI – Local Governments for Sustainability. In this volume, the first in a new series dedicated to this annual event, a range of contributors bring their perspectives to bear on the most pressing issues and controversies surrounding adaptation to climate change within cities. These writings will prove invaluable to anyone interested in understanding and confronting climate change at the local level.

This edited book provides a solid foundation for future research on cooling cities, climate change impacts on cities and urban environments, and innovative mitigation and adaptation strategies. With ever-increasing climate change impacts on our living environments and continuous calamities and natural disasters around the world, we urge for new approaches, apt action, and adequate support to boost cooling strategies for the built environments. To achieve this goal, research, practice, and policy could do much more to provide us with new pathways to achieve sustainable development. This book is a comprehensive collection of theoretical perspectives and global case study examples focused on three core areas of (1) concepts, theories, and trends, (2) mitigation and adaptation strategies, and (3) policies. The book is of use to various stakeholders and more importantly to urban specialists, planners and designers, policymakers, academics, practitioners, and developers. We urge them to mitigate climate change before it gets too late. We are confident the book could provide readers with new ideas, strategies, and directions that could lighten up the path toward new actions, policies, and innovation.