At the Great Lecture Program for SHNU School of Environmental and Geographical Sciences held on November 17th, Ian Townend, fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (RAE), spoke for SHNU students with the title Using Resilience as a Coastal Management Tool.
Townend briefed on the secure and sustainable global systematic framework and popularized the concepts of safe operation space brought up in 2009 by Rockström by means of graphics and tables. Besides, he exemplified the restoration of British coasts before eliciting the academic terminology of resilience in the ecological system. Meanwhile, he enable the students to experience the interactions between geography and life, and between humankind and environment. He stressed the importance of choosing the research direction that interests the students and encouraged them to pay homage to nature and science so that a solid foundation could be paved for future academic research.
As an academician of the RAE, Townend guided the students with his extraordinary know-how on disciplines, far-reaching research insights and exquisite professional expertise. He was the professor from Southampton University in the UK and currently an Honorary Professor of Nanjing Hydraulics Research Institute and a Guest Professor at Hohai University, Nanjing and the State Key Laboratory of Estuarine and Coastal Research at East China Normal University in Shanghai.
