On August 25, 2025, the academic symposium on "The 20th Anniversary of Nanjing University Center for Societal Risk and Public Crisis Management Studies: Review, Summary, and New Beginning" and the in-depth seminar on "Modernizing Emergency Management" were successfully held at Nanjing University. Tan Zhemin, President of Nanjing University and Academician of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Zheng Guoguang, Chairman of China Association for Disaster Prevention (CADP) and former Vice Minister of the Ministry of Emergency Management, attended the event.

In his speech, Tan Zhemin, extended a warm welcome to the leaders of relevant government departments, representatives from the emergency management academic community, and representatives from scientific research and talent cultivation partner institutions. He congratulated the Center for Societal Risk and Public Crisis Management Studies on its achievements over the past twenty years. He pointed out that President Xi Jinping's discussions on the "three importances" of emergency management has clarified the overall positioning and development direction for emergency management work in the new situation of frequent extreme disasters. The center should work with all sectors of society to strengthen research on disaster mechanisms and policies, promote the establishment of data openness and sharing mechanisms, deepen international exchanges and cooperation, promote deep integration of industry, academia, research, and application, and jointly provide support for the construction of a new era emergency management system with Chinese characteristics.

Zheng Guoguang congratulated the Center for Societal Risk and Public Crisis Management Studies on its 20th anniversary. In his speech, he pointed out that with the intensification of global climate change, the extremity and uncertainty of disasters have significantly increased, while the development and application of new-generation information technologies such as artificial intelligence provide new opportunities to address this severe challenge. Actively adapting to the trend of scientific and technological informatization and promoting the modernization of emergency management through informatization urgently requires multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary research. He expressed hope that the center would continue to play a demonstrative and leading role and make more new explorations.

The main leaders of Jiangsu Provincial Department of Emergency Management and Jiangsu Provincial Meteorological Bureau participated in the discussion and jointly planned further cooperation. The opening ceremony was chaired by Zhang Haibo, Dean of the School of Government at Nanjing University.

Tong Xing, Director of the Center for Societal Risk and Public Crisis Management Studies, chaired the academic symposium. Zhang Haibo reported on the center's construction. Zheng Guoguang chaired the discussion session on "Challenges of Extreme Disaster Response under Global Climate Change and AI-empowered Emergency Management" and "Emergency Management Paradigm Transformation and International Cooperation and Exchange." Senior experts from relevant institutions, and representatives from relevant research teams on campus in fields such as information management, artificial intelligence, urban and rural planning, atmospheric science, earth science and engineering, environmental science, former administrative team leaders of the School of Government, and relevant teacher representatives, jointly conducted in-depth discussions around the conference theme.

The Center for Societal Risk and Public Crisis Management Studies of Nanjing University was established in 2005 and is one of the earliest interdisciplinary research institutions for emergency management established in domestic universities. After twenty years of development, it has become a leading domestic and internationally renowned academic center, providing three public products for the emergency management academic community: a multidisciplinary forum on risk, disaster, and crisis, the Journal of  Risk, Disaster, and Crisis Research, and integrated literature services for multidisciplinary research on risk, disaster, and crisis. It has led the establishment of the Yangtze River Delta Alliance for Safety Development and Emergency Management Research, playing a demonstrative and leading role in scientific research, talent cultivation, and social services in emergency management, laying the foundation for the next step of building an international academic exchange center for multidisciplinary research in emergency management.