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The combination of dense urban development, hilly terrain, and intense seasonal rainfall has caused acute landslide problems in Hong Kong, which are manifested by a death toll of over 470 people since the late 1940s. Tackling landslide problems in an urban setting, in particular under the effect of climate change, calls for a development and implementation of a holistic risk management strategy. It entails the use of engineering and non-engineering approaches, involving policy, legislative, administrative, innovation, technical, educational, community-based, and emergency-preparedness provisions. In this paper, these two approaches are showcased by the slope safety system that has been developed and promulgated in managing landslide risk for building Hong Kong as a world-class smart city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the climatic and geographical setting, Hong Kong is vulnerable to landslide risk. The poignant history of landslides catalysed the establishment of the Geotechnical Engineering Office (GEO hereafter) in 1977. Since then, a comprehensive Slope Safety System has been formulated and managed by the GEO which has effectively reduced and contained landslide risk through the implementation of multi-pronged risk management strategies. Inheriting the past success, the GEO has maintained a high vigilance of emerging landslide risk and planned ahead for the future enhancement in the System. Extensive studies for the enhancement of emergency preparedness have been conducted with a view to strengthening our capability of managing landslide risk under extreme rainfall. This paper firstly presents the key elements in the Slope Safety System in Hong Kong and then highlights the technical development work in landslide risk management, early warning, landslide emergency system etc., which have been undertaken for improving resilience of the Slope Safety System against extreme rainfall events that are becoming more frequent and intense under the effect of climate change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents the findings of an outdoor thermal comfort study conducted in Hong Kong using longitudinal experiments-an alternative approach to conventional transverse surveys. In a longitudinal experiment, the thermal sensations of a relatively small number of subjects over different environmental conditions are followed and evaluated. This allows an exploration of the effects of changing climatic conditions on thermal sensation, and thus can provide information that is not possible to acquire through the conventional transverse survey. The paper addresses the effects of changing wind and solar radiation conditions on thermal sensation. It examines the use of predicted mean vote (PMV) in the outdoor context and illustrates the use of an alternative thermal index-physiological equivalent temperature (PET). The paper supports the conventional assumption that thermal neutrality corresponds to thermal comfort. Finally, predictive formulas for estimating outdoor thermal sensation are presented as functions of air temperature, wind speed, solar radiation intensity and absolute humidity. According to the formulas, for a person in light clothing sitting under shade on a typical summer day in Hong Kong where the air temperature is about 28°C and relative humidity about 80%, a wind speed of about 1.6 m/s is needed to achieve neutral thermal sensation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]