Emlyn was educated in geography with focuses on land use planning and water system management in rural-urban systems, which formed the foundation of his research on long-term climate impacts and socio-ecosystem resilience. Household survey, stakeholder network analysis, agent-based model and geo-information systems are often applied in the studies. His research interests combine urbanization, climate impacts and resilience-building in developing Asia. Dr. Yang holds a philosophy / ideology, that human societies have the capacity of resilience to live and develop better in a changing climate, and he investigates the “how”. His research objective is to establish a new research landscape of climate-resilient development and promote the “Resilience Science” in both theory and practice.

Emlyn won the prestigious ERC Starting Grant funded by the European Research Council (ERC) with a budget of 1.5 million Euro: STORIES - Spatial-Temporal Dynamics of Flood Resilience. The project investigates the dynamic interactions of floods impacts and social resilience in the Mekong River basin and covers multiple dimensions of hydrology, urbanization, economic growth, agriculture production, cooperative governance, social networks, and the indigenous culture and architecture, with a historical view of the past millennium. He is the founder and manager of the Google Group Climate Resilience (1580 members globally) and the WeChat Group Climate Resilience (689 members of Chinese-speaking). A series of scientific webinars on the theme of climate resilience has been organized since October 2021, which is currently on its 15th issue.

Dr. Yang has published over 70 peer-reviewed research papers. Beyond that, he led the editing of the Springer book volume “Socio-Environmental Dynamics along the Historical Silk Road” that was published in 2019. He also contributed to 7 of the 46 chapters in the recently published German textbook “China – Geographien einer Weltmacht” in 2023. Over the years, Emlyn assisted teaching in the University of Hamburg and Kiel University and led the teaching of modeling in human geography at the University of Munich (LMU) in Germany. He has been serving as a Climate-KIC fellow and mentor practicing climate entrepreneurship during 2011-2015. He has also consulted for the World Future Council on regenerative urban development in China (2014-2016).

Emlyn has a B.Sc in resources and environment management from Southwest University in Chongqing, and a M.Sc in Geography from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. He obtained his PhD in Geography from the University of Hamburg in Germany.

Research Interests:

• Economy
• Transportation & Urban Environment
• Climate resilience, flood resilience, urban resilience
• Developing Asia (China, Southeast Asia, South Asia)