The number of megacities worldwide is rapidly increasing and contemporary cities are also expanding fast. As a result, cities and their inhabitants are becoming increasingly vulnerable to the effects of catastrophic natural events such as extreme weather events (recently more frequent and intense as a result of the ongoing climate changes), earthquakes, tsunamis or man-induced events such as terrorist attacks or accidents. Furthermore, due to increasing technological complexity of urban areas, along with increasing population density, cities are becoming more and more risk attractors.

The resilience of cities against catastrophic events is a major challenge of today. It requires city transformation processes to be rethought, to mitigate the effects of extreme events on the vital functions of cities and communities. Redundancy and robustness of the components of the urban fabric are essential to restore the full efficiency of the city's vital functions after an extreme event has taken place. These items were addressed by an interdisciplinary and international selection of scientists during the 6th UN-World Urban Forum that was held in Naples, Italy in September 2012.

Thisvolume represents in six chapters the views from sociologists, economists and scientists working on natural risk and physical vulnerability on resilience and sustainability for future cities in relation to natural disasters."

Seismic early warning is being recognized as a methodology which offers the biggest potential for real time seismic risk mitigation, particularly in towns and industrial areas. In order to be effectively applied it requires close cooperation between seismologists, communication experts and seismic engineers. The added value of this book is to offer an overview of frontier problems related to all aspects of the seismic early warning chain, from basic seismological issues to engineering problems and system reliability. Early warning seismic networks also provide near real time shake maps for damage estimation and emergency management immediately after an event. The state of the major early warning systems in operation and in the course of development (e.g. those operated in Japan, Taiwan, Rumania, Turkey and those being implemented in California and Southern Italy) is also presented. It is the first time that all these aspects are specifically focused upon within a single book. It will constitute a reference not only for researchers and students, but for all institutions which are willing to face the development and/or implementation of this methodology, including International organizations (UNDP, European Civil Protection, European Commision) National Civil Defence organizations, industry and town-planners.

Seismic early warning is being recognized as a methodology which offers the biggest potential for real time seismic risk mitigation, particularly in towns and industrial areas. In order to be effectively applied it requires close cooperation between seismologists, communication experts and seismic engineers. The added value of this book is to offer an overview of frontier problems related to all aspects of the seismic early warning chain, from basic seismological issues to engineering problems and system reliability. Early warning seismic networks also provide near real time shake maps for damage estimation and emergency management immediately after an event. The state of the major early warning systems in operation and in the course of development (e.g. those operated in Japan, Taiwan, Rumania, Turkey and those being implemented in California and Southern Italy) is also presented. It is the first time that all these aspects are specifically focused upon within a single book. It will constitute a reference not only for researchers and students, but for all institutions which are willing to face the development and/or implementation of this methodology, including International organizations (UNDP, European Civil Protection, European Commision) National Civil Defence organizations, industry and town-planners.