BEIJING—The Integrated Research on Disaster Risk (IRDR) 2014 conference is scheduled to be held from 7th June to 9th June, 2014, at the Beijing International Convention Center (BICC). Organized by the IRDR International Programme Office and the China Association for Science and Technology (CAST), IRDR Conference 2014 is designed bring continued worldwide attention to the IRDR programme, including the emphasis on the importance of science as a tool to address hazard risks and issues of sustainable development.

The conference, themed “Integrated Disaster Risk Science: A tool for sustainability”, aims to discuss and develop ways to better integrate disaster risk science into policy, practice and sustainability. The sessions will address the range of environmental hazards, vulnerability, and sustainability in both global and local contexts. The format will be a series of plenary sessions on the challenges of implementing integrated research, inter-organizational collaboration, and policy, as well as the interaction with sustainable development activities. It is envisioned that members from the IRDR’s Scientific Committee, National/Regional Committees and International Centres of Excellence (ICoE) will play significant roles as speakers and moderators; helping to identify additional participants and speakers; and identifying linkages with representatives from the planning organizations. Other speakers will be identified as needed.

The IRDR programme is the first large-scale, international organization of its kind in Asia, a continent frequently plagued by disasters. IRDR is co-sponsored by the International Council for Science (ICSU), the International Social Science Council (ISSC), and the United Nations International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UN-ISDR), and hosted by the Institute of Remote Sensing and Digital Earth (RADI), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). It is a global, multi-disciplinary approach to dealing with the challenges brought by natural disasters, including mitigating their impacts and improving related policy-making mechanisms.

For more information, see http://www.irdrinternational.org/conference/.