APRU presented its Campus Safety Initiative at the International Sustainable Campus Network (ISCN) 2015 Conference in Hong Kong, 17-19 June 2015. This year’s conference was hosted by The University of Hong Kong (HKU), a longtime APRU member university, and it was themed “Expanding the Dialogue: Sustainability in a Connected World”.

This year the safety of campuses has been discussed among the ISCN audience. The APRU Multi-Hazards Program was invited by the Working Group on campus-wide planning and target setting to present the outcomes of its campus safety survey and report and to talk about the next steps in creating more disaster resilient campuses within the APRU network. Safety and sustainability aim for the same goal – conserving resources. Campus safety has not been discussed in this forum before which resulted in a lot of questions and comments by the participants of the workshop. Everyone agreed that emergency preparedness is a crucial part of university planning and needs to be integrated into sustainability plans.

ISCN brings together thought leaders, practitioners and change agents to exchange perspectives and form global partnerships in pursuit of sustainability. Academic and administrative university leaders share experiences, measure achievements and report about performances in creating more sustainable environments on our campuses. The network has over 70 institutional members including 12 APRU member universities: Chulalongkorn University, Keio University, Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education, National University of Singapore, Osaka University, Peking University, Stanford University, University of British Columbia, University of Hong Kong, University of Melbourne, University of Malaya and Tsinghua University. ISCN awards annually the best sustainable campus performance in four categories. We are congratulating APRU member University of British Columbia which was awarded for its “Excellence in Building” this year.