WCS Science of Cities Symposium – Panel 1

Bringing together international academic researchers, urban practitioners and industry experts from around the world to share their scientific knowledge, novel research methodologies and insights on tackling current and emerging urban challenges, the World Cities Summit (WCS) 2024 Science of Cities Symposium was attended by over 200 delegates.

Panel 1 Opening Address by Professor Lily Kong, President of the Singapore Management University (SMU).

The theme of the first panel at the Symposium was Science of Climate Adaptive Cities, which featured an opening address by Professor Lily Kong from SMU, presentations by two keynote speakers, Professor Thomas Schroepfer from SUTD and SEC-FCL Global, and Professor Barbara Norman from University of Canberra, and five research presenters. The session concluded with an engaging moderated panel discussion.

Panel 1 Discussion (from left to right) – Professor Thomas Schroepfer, Professor Barbara Norman, Dr Chen Song, Professor Yuan Chao, Professor Kristina Orehounig, Dr Srilalitha Gopalakrishnan, Dr Sergi Sauri.

Here are the three key takeaways from Panel 1:

1. With the increasingly complex nature and impacts of climate change, there is greater need to adopt an interdisciplinary and evidence-based approach for research in this domain.

2. As part of this effort, there is a growing demand for finer-grained and predictive climate modelling tools to analyse the impacts of climate change.

3. Beyond building climate resilience, there continues to be a need for more conversations about the potential trade-offs associated with adopting climate resilient solutions and how trade-offs may be mitigated.

Read the full summary of Panel 1 here [PDF, 1.3 MB].