16th UCL Risk & Disaster Reduction annual conference

Morning Plenary — Pool Street Cinema

09:00–09:30 — Registration and coffee

09:30–09:45 — Welcome address Professor Joanna Faure Walker, Head of Department, UCL Risk & Disaster Reduction

09:45–10:30 — Keynote Address by Loretta Hieber Girardet

• Curated by Dr Ting Sun and Professor Mark Pelling

10:30–11:00 — Coffee break

11:00–12:30 — Panel: Responsible Intelligence  

• Lead: Dr Saman Ghaffarian  
• AI in disaster risk, ethics, data governance, responsible automation. Exploring the opportunities and ethical challenges of deploying AI and digital technologies in disaster risk management.

12:30–14:00 — Lunch and etworking

Afternoon parallel tracks (14:00–17:00)

In the afternoon there are two options: join expert panel sessions in the main auditorium (track A) or join the hackathon (track B, application process applies).

Track A

Infrastructure risk and multi‑hazard (14:00–15:20)

Cities of the future will increasingly face complex and interacting hazards. These include earthquakes, floods, heatwaves and other climate-related risks. At the same time, infrastructure systems are becoming more interconnected and critical to urban functioning. 

Over the past decades, significant advances have been made in modelling infrastructure risk. Structural engineering research has improved the understanding of infrastructure performance under multiple hazards, while catastrophe modelling has enabled large-scale analysis of disaster risk across regions and portfolios. International organisations and development banks are also investing heavily in infrastructure resilience and urban risk reduction. 

Despite these advances, explicit multi-hazard risk modelling rarely plays a central role in infrastructure planning and investment decisions. 

This panel brings together perspectives from science, industry, policy and finance to explore a central question: 'Why are increasingly sophisticated risk models not yet shaping infrastructure decisions in cities?'

By comparing how different communities understand infrastructure risk, the discussion aims to identify the scientific, practical and institutional barriers that prevent models from translating into decisions. 

• Lead: Dr Roberto Gentile
• Venue: Pool Street Cinema
• Speakers announced soon

Tea break (15:20–15:40)

Can forced displacement make cities? (15:40–17:00)

At a time when war, environmental disasters, aggressive urban development, and projects of territorial control are reshaping where and how people can live, this panel examines the relationship between displacement and the making of urban space. 

Bringing together diverse case studies and disciplinary approaches, the presentations explore how cities are transformed through layered forms of forced mobility, precarity, and uneven reconstruction. 

The panel foregrounds the fragility of everyday urban life while attending to the social and material practices through which displaced people inhabit and remake urban environments. 

By focusing on ‘glocal’ experiences of loss, adaptation, and rebuilding, the panel highlights how displacement is not only a condition of exclusion and vulnerability, but also a site where new urban futures can be questioned or imagined. 

• Lead: Dr Estella Carpi
• Speakers
  • Dr Giovanna Astolfo, UCL Bartlett Development Planning Unit
  • Professor Camillo Boano, UCL Bartlett Development Planning Unit
  • Dr Irit Katz, University of Cambridge
  • Professor Cassidy Johnson, UCL Bartlett Development Planning Unit
• The panel will be formed of four presentations of ten minutes each. The moderators will pose two questions to each panellist before opening for questions from the audience.
• Venue: Pool Street Cinema

Track B 

Explorative hackathon: reimagining future cities

What if you could model a city's climate without writing a single line of code?

In this three-hour hands-on session, participants will use SUEWS — a research-grade urban climate model developed jointly by UCL and the University of Reading — through a natural-language AI interface. Ask questions in plain English, configure scenarios interactively, and explore how green infrastructure, building density and urban design choices affect temperature, energy use and water cycling in real cities.

This session is part of the UKRI-funded SUEWS-Next project, which is modernising urban climate modelling tools and building an international community of practice.

Places are limited to 20. Interested participants will be contacted separately with further details and selection criteria. Priority will be given to postgraduate researchers and early-career academics working on urban climate, planning or resilience. No programming experience required. Bring a laptop and curiosity.

• Lead: Dr Ting Sun
• Hackathon style, continuous 3-hour session
• Venue: Staff Common Room, Marshgate
• If you would like to take part in the hackathon, please indicate your interest via the conference registration form by 15 May 2026.

Closing and reception

17:00–17:20 — Closing ceremony, Professor Joanna Faure Walker

17:30 onwards — Drinks reception

Are there any discounts on the ticket price? 
The registration fee is waived for current UCL RDR students and staff.

Is funding available to support delegate participation in the conference?I'm afraid we do not have funding for delegate registration fees, travel or accommodation. 

Will the event be live-streamed? 
No, this is an in-person only event. 

Will the event be recorded and shared afterwards? 
This will be confirmed nearer the time, for selected sessions only. 

Will there be any outputs from the conference? 
We will share a conference report over the summer and there will be information available about the hackathon outputs.

Is there storage for my belongings at the venue? 
I'm afraid we do not have a luggage storage area or cloakroom at this venue. 

Is there space to work at the venue? 
Yes. There are public seating areas just outside the conference room suitable for desk work and phone/video calls.