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This study aims to provide an analysis and evaluation of infrastructure resilience, one of the components of disaster resilience, to natural hazards.

The analysis of this study consists of four stages. First, descriptive statistical analyses were carried out on the soft and hard infrastructure resilience and natural hazard index. Second, the spatial data were visualized through the exploratory spatial data analysis to understand the spatial distribution and spatial characteristics of variables of the data. Third, the local indicators of the spatial association method were used to identify areas in clusters where infrastructure resilience is weak. Fourth, comparisons were made between the soft and hard infrastructure resilience and natural hazard index: the level of natural hazard is high but the soft and infrastructure resilience remain very vulnerable to disaster.

The study found that infrastructure resilience varies from community to community, particularly in the same community, in terms of hard infrastructure and soft infrastructure. In addition, the comparative analysis between infrastructure resilience and disaster risk levels resulted in communities that were likely to suffer greatly in the event of a disaster.

This study is meaningful in that infrastructure resilience of Korean local governments was discussed by dividing them into soft and hard infrastructure and comparing them to natural disaster risk levels. In particular, the comparison with the natural disaster risk level identified local governments that are likely to experience significant damage from the natural disaster, which is meaningful in that it serves as a basis for policy practitioners to actively build infrastructure and respond to disasters.

The purpose of this paper is to identify major challenges that Asia-Pacific policy makers face in drawing up international logistics policies, and to seek possible solutions to the problems.

Case study method: the paper includes seven case studies that attempt to address various types of logistics challenges. The paper introduces both intra- and extra-regional examples of the ways in which those challenges have been overcome in particular contexts through concerted action by government and the private sector.

There are a lot of interesting experiences of overcoming logistics challenges, both inside and outside the Asia-Pacific region. Good practice experiences can be replicated by other countries in the region.

While there have been a lot of discussions on logistics policy reforms, this paper is one of the first attempts that clearly link challenges with concrete case experiences where those are overcome. The paper discusses very practical issues in an analytically sound manner, using case method.

Mounting fiscal constraints and increasing complexity of public services have led governments to search for alternative service delivery mechanisms. The public–private partnership (PPP) is one type of service arrangement in which the public and private sectors enter into a long-term cooperative relationship for the purpose of delivering a public good or service. Despite increasing private sector participation in developing nations, there is a need for more systematic assessment of PPPs in such countries. The purpose of this paper is to explore the factors that affect the adoption and implementation of projects in the context of developing countries.

A multiple case holistic design is employed to analyze 19 select projects across several developing countries to identify and pool clusters of variables that facilitate or impede PPPs.

The results indicate five broad categories of political, economic, legislative, financial and management requisites.

A limitation of this research is that the cases were not selected at random. However, the projects are spread across several areas such as public health, public utilities, public works, transportation and water/wastewater infrastructure in different countries. This allows the authors to examine how the common factors apply across different contextual settings.

This paper seeks to contribute to the literature by examining several developing countries to identify and pool clusters of variables that facilitate or impede the effective implementation of PPP projects in the context of such regions.

The author believes that China’s modern development is reaching a crossroads, and that country is facing some critical challenges as it seeks to keep its modernization program, and further economic development, on track.

This masterclass posits that understanding more fully what is happening in China, and how to succeed there, is rapidly becoming a strategic imperative for any corporate leader with global ambitions.

China’s importance to global business is undeniable. Even though its growth rate now seems to be stabilizing at 7-8 percent, China looks set to become the world’s largest economy within a decade, and is likely to be more than twice the size of USA economy by 2050.

Soft infrastructure should be China’s next priority. China’s ability to construct a modern airport and a fleet of world class aircraft has been progressing at a much faster rate than its overall ability to operate an efficient, world-leading, inter-city and international, civil aviation passenger service.

While the pace of political reform is likely to remain cautious, it has already been quite “extensive and far-reaching” in China’s own terms and continues to evolve.

Western leaders should reconsider how they measure China’s progress. China can be expected to experiment its way very cautiously towards greater democratization, but the outcome is likely to be profoundly different from the Western model.

As the size of the population is growing and the capacity of the planet Earth is limited, human beings are searching for sustainable and technology-enabled solutions to support society, ecology and economy. One of the solutions has been developing smart sustainable cities. Smart sustainable cities are cities as systems, where their infrastructure, different subsystems and different functional domains are virtually connected to the information and communication technologies (ICT) and internet via sensors and devices and the Internet of Things (IoT), to collect and process real-time Big Data and make efficient, effective and sustainable solutions for a democratic and liveable city for its various stakeholders. This chapter explores the concepts and practices of sustainable smart cities across the globe and explores the use of technologies such as IoT, Blockchain technology and Cloud computing, etc. their challenges and then presents a view on business models for sustainable smart cities.

The Korean Government wishes to transform the nation into a Northeast Asian business hub. Following economic crisis, there are attempts to move the economy towards a new market‐oriented paradigm of economic growth based on foreign direct investment (FDI) and market friendly transparent corporate governance, replacing the old model of the developmental state, involving intimate and opaque business‐government relations, which has dominated Korean policy for at least three decades. This paper presents findings from 37 interviews conducted with senior executives of foreign companies and various chambers of commerce in Korea. The paper offers new insights into the critical and often invisible issues which need to be confronted and successfully resolved for the transformation of Korea. In providing a critical analysis, the paper examines alternative interpretations of the hub concept, key advantages offered by Korea, the main barriers to becoming a hub, competition from other locations and draws lessons for government policy makers.

The paper aims to share experiences in Thailand's higher educational reforms in which academic excellence cannot be sustained without proper financial and fiscal consideration. The overall goal is to disclose the experiences and future issues facing public universities.

The paper is based on actual involvement by Kasetsart University in assisting the Commission of Higher Education's (CHE) university reform efforts. In addition to projects supported financially by CHE, Kasetsart University has also participated as a committee member and an invited expert. The paper is narrative in nature. It begins by showing the positive impacts from higher education on a country's level of competitiveness, and the inter‐relationship between higher education and innovation. The paper describes the country's recent major reform initiatives to achieve academic excellence and raises concerns over sustainability for public universities.

The experiences from Thailand can be helpful for many countries as the country is moving from an industrial‐based economy towards a knowledge‐based economy. The major concern is that academic excellence for public universities cannot be sustained without more effective fiscal management and public‐private partnership. Finally, despite the fact that the article is descriptive; the knowledge and lessons learned should be beneficial to scholars and practitioners who are interested in higher education reforms.

Academic excellence has often been discussed within the context of quality and innovation without explicitly considering fiscal management. The potential use of public‐private partnerships, which can improve the effectiveness of fiscal management, is revealed and discussed. The knowledge and lessons learned should be beneficial to scholars and practitioners who are interested in higher education reforms.

Rising human aspirations leading to rapid urbanisation, amidst climate changes and other environmental pressures have aggravated the needs for better-focused sustainable urban development in general as well as for smart and sustainable cities in particular. Indeed, smart infrastructure (SI) development is a prerequisite for smart cities (SCs). However, inadequate funding and expertise for such SI development pose profound challenges that may be partially addressed by mobilising private finance and efficiencies through collaborative public–private partnership (PPP) models. This paper provides a holistic review and analysis of the relevant literature, as a basis for proposing such PPP models for developing SI.

A systematic literature review helped to fulfil the aim of this paper in the first phase of the underlying longer-term study. Authoritative search engines like Scopus and Web of Science indexed articles were reviewed and analysed, 85% of these being journal articles.

SCs that necessarily include SI are important in overcoming current urban challenges in developing and developed countries. Given shortfalls in traditional procurement and funding models, special PPP models are required for SI development. After identifying the relevant needs, drivers, barriers and challenges in different countries, a general indicative framework is developed to illustrate how the various interacting force fields can be harnessed to develop the envisaged PPP models that can complement non-PPP procurement models.

PPP for SI development is a relatively new, hence, under-researched topic. This desktop review and analysis provide a useful launching pad for the development of SI through overcoming the potential challenges in traditional procurement and financial models.