Dr.Hesham Mohamed El-Barmelgy

Dr.Hesham Mohamed El-Barmelgy

Professor of Sustainable Development & Urban Design -  Faculty of Regional & Urban Planning -CairoUniversity.

PhD of Sustainable Development and Tourism Planning joint venture Cairo University, Faculty of Urban and Regional Planning and Cardiff University, Wales, UK.

Member of International Society of City and Regional Planners (ISOCARP)

Member of International Society of Development & Sustainability (ISDS)

Dr.Hesham El-Barmelgy studied architecture at the Architecture Department, Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University where he graduated in 1990. Since then he has joined the Faculty of Regional and Urban Planning as an instructor where he earned his master degree of Regional and Urban Planning as an urban designer in 1997. He pursued his study for his Ph.D, which he received in 2002 as a joint program between Cairo University and Cardiff University (Wales, UK), Department of City and Regional Planning. In April 2014, he was appointed the position of a Professor of Sustainable Development and Urban Design at the department of Urban Design, Faculty of Regional and Urban Planning, Cairo University.

Dr.Hesham El-Barmelgy is one of the pioneers who have introduced the concept of sustainability in the planning field in Egypt. His first work concerning the efficiency of sustainability in overcoming the problems of the tourism industry in Egypt promoted sustainable tourism development. His studies and work in the early years of 2000 focused on the North West Coast of Egypt, testing and proving the ability of the region to promote a sustainable tourism product as one of the most promising development regions in Egypt. Nowadays, the Egyptian government has noticed such importance; issuing the area as a high priority development area. In addition, the government has recently reached a decision of establishing the first Egyptian new sustainable development city in the Alamaien City as the capital for the sustainable development of the region. Over a period of 20 years Dr. El-Barmelgy's work and research has been focusing on the ability of promoting sustainability within the limitations, realties and constrains of the Egyptian context. Most of his work was about introducing sustainability for the benefits of the human, nature and the build dimensions. He studied in depth the sustainability tools and developed a framework for evaluation, selection and adaptation of international tools to overcome the local problems in the Egyptian context.

Recently, he started researching and practically implementing projects in the field of healing landscape. He mainly looks at the benefits of such landscapes that introduce better health to the environment and human well-being, as well as being the climax of the sustainable development process. Based on the fact that any landscape has healing powers, his research focuses on bridging the gap between the health research and the landscape professional. His work focuses on the ability of maximizing that healing powers. Healing landscape design is composed of two layers the cognitive layer comprising the horticulture therapeutic program and the physical layer containing the ordinary design components of any landscape.

In the time being Dr.Hesham is engaged in a number of researches concerning the tsunami natural phenomena and its impact on the sustainable development of costal areas and communities. His research focuses on modeling for the prediction of tsunami urban prone and hazard areas, and developing a risk assessment model that would predict building hazard levels. The models would be used to implement the required evacuation plans that would help save millions of lives in tsunami prone areas. His research also focuses on tsunami planning consistency, tsunami evacuation plans and tsunami fore-signing studies.