Specific social and ecological features and their interaction jointly create the vulnerability and resilience of a location/community. These characteristics determine the extent to which a community are impacted by and can recover from environmental change. Strategic environmental planning and management that rehabilitates ecosystems and reintroduces nature into human settlements plays a vital role in connecting human and nature, and thereby shaping social-ecological resilience.

This class introduces the core concept of contemporary resilience theory to provide students with a conceptual framework for understanding and evaluating social-ecological resilience. Key ecological planning concepts and strategies, including green infrastructure planning, ecosystem services, and nature-based solutions, are designed as part of module for fostering students with capacity to bridge concepts and practice for nature-based resilience planning. This course emphasizes learning from doing, and will combine lectures, case study, field work, and team work for presenting planning proposals. This year, the course will include an overseas field trip about Eco-DRR (Ecological Disaster Risk Reduction) in Fukushima in Japan in collaboration with the University of Tokyo (Japan) and Open University (UK).