Judith Rodin advises:  preparing for the future means building better cities. New York; Athens; Wenzhou; Boston; Oslo; Dhaka; New Orleans; Nairobi. In recent years, dozens of cities across the globe have beenhit by large-scale catastrophes of every kind: natural disaster, geopolitical conflict, food shortages, disease and contagion, terrorist attacks. If you haven't been directly touched by one of these cataclysms yourself, in our interconnected world you are sure to have been affected in some way. They harm vulnerable individuals, destabilise communities and threaten organisations and even whole societies.

We are at greater risk than ever from city-wide catastrophe, and as the severity and frequency of these disasters increase, we must become better at preparing for, responding to and recovering from them. Why did more girls than boys drown in Japan's 2011 tsunami, and what does the case of Haiti's humanitarian aid tell us about the future?

Dr Judith Rodin, President, Rockefeller Foundation, author of The Resilience Dividend, and one of the world's leading public thinkers, brings together ground-breaking research to help build a radical future in which individuals, companies and entire societies avert disaster by creating more dynamic, more resilient cities. To order her book from Amazon, just click on the image or visit your local book store. Streamed live on Jan 20, 2015