Emergency Management Science and Technology: An international transdisciplinary platform

Clear evidence indicates that the earth is experiencing a gra dual increase in global average temperature, which is deemed to contribute considerably to the frequent occurrence of ex treme natural events, including droughts, flooding, hurricanes, storm surges, wildfires, desertification, sandstorms, landslides, debris flows, plague, and crop biological disasters. Additionally, human-related or technological disasters, such as industrial and transportation accidents, further facilitate the risk of human exposure to extreme urban hazards, and cause high casualties, fatalities and financial losses. These worldwide natural disasters and tremendous production safety accidents have had a huge negative impact on human life and posed devastating threats to social stability. The last few decades have witnessed a dra matic increase in disastrous events. Over the past decade, more than 7,300 disastrous events were reported worldwide, an increase of 73% compared to those reported between 1980 and 1999 [1] . In order to improve the response capability and minimize property damage when encountering various types of disasters, emergency management (EM) systems have been established rapidly in most countries and regions. The develop ment of timely and effective EM systems has become increas ingly attractive, primarily aiming to help and enable emergency managers to prepare for unanticipated disasters and respond to urgent events. The definition of EM is given as an integrated decision support system composed of a variety of tasks that covers the lifecycle of an emergency event [2] . Effective preven tion of emergency events serves as a key role in EM systems aimed at minimizing or eliminating losses and impacts in