Towards Holistic Urban Resilience: Prescribing Greening Solutions for Climate Adaptation

Abstract

Urbanisation represents a dominant demographic trend, with current estimates indicating that 55% of the global population resides in cities, a figure projected to rise to 68% by 2050. This concentration of people and infrastructure exacerbates a suite of interconnected environmental challenges, including deleterious air quality, urban heat island effects, altered hydrological cycles leading to both flooding and droughts, and a pervasive loss of biodiversity1. Traditionally, these issues have been addressed in a siloed manner, often only upon reaching crisis levels. A paradigm shift towards proactive, integrated, and holistic strategies is therefore imperative for building urban resilience. This presentation argues that multifunctional urban greening, or nature-based solutions (NBS), constitute a cornerstone of this necessary transition.

Speaker

Professor Prashant Kumar is Chair in Air Quality and Health, the founding Director of the Global Centre for Clean Air Research (GCARE), the founding Co-Director of the Institute for Sustainability, and the founder of Guilford Living Lab, Trustee of Zero Carbon Guildford, Adjunct Professor at Trinity College Dublin, Guest Professor at Southeast University, and Distinguished Guest Professor at Chongqing University. He obtained his PhD (Engineering) from the University of Cambridge (UK) after winning a Cambridge-Nehru Scholarship and Overseas Research Scholarship award. He earned his Master's Degree in Environmental Engineering & Management from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi, where he secured CGPA 9.8/10 and won the ‘Outstanding Postgraduate Student Award’ for his exemplary performance.

His fundamental and application-oriented cross-disciplinary research develops the interfaces between clean air, human health and smart/sustainable living in cities/megacities. His research projects focus on multidisciplinary areas, including air pollution monitoring/modelling, low-cost sensing, citizen science participation, nature-based solutions for climate change mitigation, and the development of innovative technological and passive (green infrastructure) solutions, tools, and guidance for both the developing and developed worlds.

Winner of the 2023 “Haagen-Smit Clean Air Award,” regarded as the "Nobel Prize in Clean Air Achievements”, he was recognised as a top 1% Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate in 2022, 2023 and 2024. He received the University of Surrey’s Vice-Chancellor Award for Researcher of the Year in 2017, and his paper on green infrastructure won the “2023 Haagen-Smit Prize for Best Paper” from Elsevier.

With over 450 journal articles published in prestigious journals like Science, Nature Cities, and Chemical Society Reviews, he has garnered ~33,000 citations (h-index, 88, i10-index ~400). He has successfully secured over £25M in individual research funding from UKRI, including roles as Principal Investigator on the £1.5M RECLAIM Network Plus and £2M GP4Streets, and 0.6M GREENIN Micro Network Plus projects, as well as support from industry and international organisations. His research frequently appears in prominent media outlets, including the BBC and The Times. Visit www.surrey.ac.uk/gcare for more info.

Please join us for networking opportunities and refreshments following this event.

RMIT’s Post-Carbon Research Centre, established in 2024, is a joint initiative of the University’s College of Design and Social Context and STEM College. The Centre tackles the complex challenges of decarbonising the built environment and infrastructures to transition to a sustainable, equitable and resilient future. Combining multi-disciplinary research capabilities across the built environment and infrastructure sectors, our researchers execute real world applications that enable both innovation and impact and stay connected to social and political context for implementation at scale. 

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