Pavithra Ganeshu is pursuing a doctorate in philosophy in disaster management at the University of Salford, Salford, UK. Her research is focused on enhancing stakeholder collaboration in risk-sensitive urban development, disaster management, cost estimates, and the sustainable built environment. She earned a First Class B.Sc. (Hons) in Quantity Surveying and worked as a quantity surveyor at Maga Engineering (Pvt) Ltd. and as a cost estimator at CML MTD (Pvt) Ltd. in Sri Lanka for three years. Subsequently, she worked as a Lecturer at the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, for two years. Furthermore, she is a member of the Australian Institute of Quantity Surveyors. She was awarded the Best Track Paper Award at the 2019 IEOM Bangkok Conference. Her research interests are adaptive Governance, Disaster Management, tendering, and Cost Estimation.

Professor Terrence Fernando has extensive experience in leading multidisciplinary research teams to develop collaborative technology platforms for solving complex problems. In this context, he has contributed to areas such as collaborative engineering, space exploration, the sustainable built environment, and disaster management, which require extensive multi-functional team collaboration to produce sound solutions. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science and an MSc in Microprocessor Engineering & Digital Electronics at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology and a BSc (Hons) in Electronics & Telecommunication Engineering at the University of Moratuwa. Now he is the Director of the THINKlab at the University of Salford, Salford, UK, which works closely with industry and government agencies to develop innovative technology platforms that exploit the power of data, analytics, advanced visualization, and simulation. His areas of research are Disaster Risk Reduction, Collaborative Environments, Virtual Reality, Modelling, Simulation, and Smart Cities. He has 103 papers publications with 2343 citations and an h-index of 24 (Scopus, 26 October 2023) in these areas.

Marie-Christine Therrien is a Management Professor at the École nationale d’administration publique and Director of Cité-ID LivingLab Urban Resilience Governance. Her research explores issues of network coordination, organizational failure, knowledge transfer, resilience in organizations, and crisis management. Outside of her academic research, she has worked in partnership with several public and private organizations, such as the Montréal Center of Resilience, Science Application International Corporation, the Quebec government, and the Canadian Red Cross. Within these experiences, she has successfully assisted the City of Montréal in joining the Rockefeller Foundation’s 100 Resilient Cities program. Throughout her career, she carried out several mandates, evaluations, and analyses. She has worked on the Spring 2017 floods in Quebec as an analyst for the scientific commission on the 1998 ice storm crisis, as well as with the Ministry of Health to evaluate their intervention following the influenza pandemic A (H1N1). She has published articles in numerous journals, such as the Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, Resilience: International Policies, Practices and Discourses, International Journal of Risk Assessment and Management, etc. She is the primary author of more than 20 papers and book chapters, as well as the editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Emergency Management.

Dr Kaushal Keraminiyage is an experienced researcher and academic, working as a Reader at the School of the Built Environment and the Centre for Disaster Resilience at the University of Salford, Salford, UK. He has over 15 years of experience as an academic in the higher education sector both in the UK and Sri Lanka. He is an experienced researcher with a good publication profile and funded research projects. His current research interests align with Disaster-Induced Resettlements, Resettled Community Integration, Community Resilience to Disasters, Agile Communities for Disaster Response, and Sustainable and Resilient Urban Developments. During the last few years, he has actively been engaged in organising high-profile research conferences at various international locations, creating strong links with various Built Environment and Disaster Management experts and stakeholders. He is also continuously engaged in conducting PhD assessments. He has been invited to conduct a number of plenary speeches and guest lectures at international academic and practitioner forums and facilitated a number of doctoral training programmes both nationally and internationally.