9th Annual Emergency Management Conference

Anticipation - Preparation - Mitigation

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About

Keynote International Addresses from:
Kate Brady, State Coordinator - Bushfire Recovery, Red Cross Australia
Dr Carl Gibson, Director – Risk Management Unit, La Trobe University, Melbourne

Plus! An opening address from David Coetzee, National Controller, Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management

Join in the discussions as we take on some of the key issues and events affecting the EM Community
• Examining the global Swine Flu pandemic
• Response and Recovery from 2009 Victoria Bushfires
• Fostering resilient communities
• The response to the Pacific Tsunami
• Use of cloud and wireless technologies in communications
• Building resilient organisations

From influenza pandemics to tsunamis, New Zealand is a country that needs to be constantly on alert and ready to repond. The need to create more resilient communities has never been more urgent. If we can move away from simply raising awareness to truly changing behaviours, then our communities will be safer and more prepared for when the worst happens.

Conferenz’s 9th Annual Emergency Management Conference will cover all of the crucial events, developments and technologies that have affected the EM sector in the past 12 months.

So why should you make the time and investment to come to this conference? Simple…

1. Value for money: we’ve listened to the market and are committed to delivering you a quality event at an affordable price
2. Quality: we’ve sourced a wide range of top New Zealand and International speakers, discussing the latest and most relevant ideas and case studies
3. Networking: with participation across the key Emergency Management players, this conference will help you expand your professional networks and reconnect with the industry
4. Variety: This event covers all key areas and events affecting the EM sector, including:

Swine flu pandemic response | Victoria Bushfires | Pacific Tsunami | Community and organisational resilience
Leadership and psychosocial aspects of EM | GIS and wireless communications advances

International speakers for 2010

Kate Brady, State Coordinator - Bushfire Recovery, Red Cross Australia
Kate Brady is the Victorian State Coordinator for Bushfire Recovery at Red Cross where she is responsible for coordinating all recovery services that Red Cross provides in communities affected by the 2009 bushfires. She brings experience in project management, stakeholder engagement, community consultation and advocacy campaigns to this role. Prior to joining the Red Cross, Kate was the Victorian State Manager for the CREATE Foundation, an advocacy organisation for young people in protective care, where she worked with young people to promote their voices and views of the care system

Dr Carl Gibson, Director – Risk Management Unit, La Trobe University, Australia
Carl Gibson is the Director of the Risk Management Unit at La Trobe University. Carl was an author of the new AS/NZS:5050 Business Continuity Standard. Currently, Carl has worked up an international portfolio as a senior executive with both public and private sectors. Besides being both a researcher and practitioner in the fields of business continuity and risk management, Dr. Gibson has also worked with military and security organizations.

And if you also have responsibility for maintaining continuity of services during unforeseen events and crises, then you wouldn’t want to miss the:

5th Annual Business Continuity Conference
Ensuring comprehensive organisational resilience with robust business continuity strategies
24 February 2010, Duxton Hotel, Wellington

This separately bookable one day intensive will explore key themes to imbue your business with end to end resilience, to protect you against all manner of business continuity risks

Agenda

Day 1

8.30

Registration & Coffee

9.00

Opening remarks from the Chair

Kristin Hoskin, Associate Director, Kestrel Group; President- Oceania, International Association of Emergency Managers (IAEM)

9.10

Opening Address (Keynote)

This opening address will discuss the state of New Zealand’s civil defence infrastructure, the importance of an integrated and comprehensive approach to addressing emergency preparedness, and the ongoing work MCDEM is doing to ensure more prepared and safer communities.

David Coetzee, National Controller, Ministry of Civil Defence and Emergency Management

9.40

KEYNOTE INTERNATIONAL CASE STUDY: Recovering from a disaster: the road back from the 2009 Victorian bushfires (Keynote)

The Black Saturday bushfires of February-March 2009 were some of the severest in Australian history, resulting in over 2000 homes destroyed and 173 fatalities. In the wake of the tragedy, it was critical to get a concerted and integrated recovery response in order to rebuild communities. This session will explore the work the Australian Red Cross undertook to assist in the recovery efforts.
• The importance of fully engaging the community during rebuilding
• The importance of coordinating recovery efforts
• Providing psychological support to a shocked community

Kate Brady, State Coordinator - Bushfire Recovery, Red Cross Australia

10.30

Morning tea

10.50

CASE STUDY: Lessons learned from the New Zealand deployment to the Victoria bushfires (Case Study)

Australia has a more extensive and intensive fire problem than New Zealand due to its continental climate, high temperatures and susceptible volatile vegetation fuel. Fire management is more developed and integrated in Australia as a consequence. This session will compare the Victorian and New Zealand fire response structures and processes, as well as suggesting lessons that the EM community in New Zealand can learn from across the Tasman.
• Use of common Incident Control Systems, linking these to regularly updated Incident Action Plans and a networked support structure
• State Government expectations and how these are followed in an apparently seamless way
• Transition to Recovery: at the fire ground, support systems, rebuilding with better Standards

(Paul has been on all three deployments to the fire-ravaged Victoria region over the past 7 years, in 2003, 2007 and 2009.)

Paul Baker, Manager Rural Fire - Napier, National Rural Fire Authority

Please check back soon for Emergency Pamphlets

11.40

CASE STUDY: The evolution of the NZ Red Cross’ Emergency Management Teams (Case Study)

Over the past two years the Red Cross have undertaken significant work to provide a consistent, high quality emergency response volunteer capacity. This involves the development of national standards, training, and an overhaul of the governance of volunteer teams to maintain a national strategic direction. This session will outline the work today, as well as the ongoing work the NZ Red Cross is doing to further enhance their ability to respond to crises.

David Neal, National Community Programmes Manager, New Zealand Red Cross

12.30

Lunch

1.15

BREAKOUT STREAMS

Customise your learning with our break-out streams. Attend the most relevant sessions to you to maximise your learning experience!

1.15

Leadership in Emergency Management

Live emergencies are stressful and challenging times, and being able to make correct and accurate decisions in adverse conditions can potentially save lives. This session will explore the key characteristics and skillsets required by effective EM professionals.
• Are emergency response leaders born or made?
• Strategies for effective decision-making for EM professionals
• Ensuring you and your team can cope with the stress and trauma of a live emergency

Sharyn Devereux-Blum, Director, Devereux-Blum Training and Development Limited

Please check back soon for presentation

1.15

The APCO-P25 rollout: what you need to know

In 2007, the Emergency Telecommunications Services Steering Group, upon Government direction, decided to upgrade the Police/Fire Land Mobile Radio Network (LMRN) as the equipment is operating beyond its economic life. The APCO-P25 network has since been selected to be rolled out, but this leaves many implications in terms of:
• Infrastructure funding
• The time-table for equipping services
• Costs to users for equipping and upgrading handsets and receivers

Richard Harkett, New Zealand Police

2.00

Enhancing community resilience

Developing resilience at a community level is most successful if done through a grass-roots approach rather than a largescale
awareness campaign. In addition to having a greater potential to change behaviours, it has the added advantage of potentially
being substantially cheaper to apply. This session will discuss thoughts on how best to foster community resilience effectively.
• What does a resilient community look like?
• Raising awareness vs. changing behaviours
• The importance of creating agents of change

Jarrod Coburn, Former Executive Director, New Zealand Resilience Trust

2.00

Lost Person Behaviour: historical data and statistics being used to support decision making processes during a land search and rescue operation

Search is an emergency which frequently requires an immediate response – lives are at stake! However as often happens in the initial stages of an operation specific information relating to the unique behavioural characteristics of the missing subject on which to base sound incident management decisions is either absent, fragmentary, contradictory, ambiguous or plain wrong – sound familiar in other spheres of emergency response? To mitigate this issue international land search and rescue practitioners have analysed the behaviour of previous lost and missing persons to create a very useful predictive tool – statistics and data that can be used to initiate a rapid response and enhance the probability of success.

Pete Corbett, Programme Manager - SAR Management, SARINZ

2.45

The answer is not to shoot them! Considering domestic animals in emergency situations

Pets are one of the family and more events such as Hurricane Katrina proved that unless emergency management officials accommodate pets in evacuation planning, they will put the lives of people at risk. This session will be looking at international trends and practices for protecting the “other members” of today’s family and why this is a “human issue” not an animal one. The presentation will focus on:
• The human animal bond
• Case studies on the impact of evacuation failures
• The introduction and importance of the US PETS Act
• Practical considerations for emergency planners

Steve Glassey, Director, Mercalli Disaster Management Consulting

2.45

What’s in the cloud and how do I get it?

It wasn’t so long ago that the thought of web-based I I applications for emergency management was akin to a Wylie E Coyote plan... cunning but crazy! Today however the internet is an incredible resource of interconnected computers and it has never failed. This presentation will attempt to draw together some of the tools that are available via the internet and why cloud based computing is an option for many organisations.
• Using Open Source principles to expedite decision-making
• The advantages of cloud
• The need to invest in BGAN and IPStar, as well as connectivity technology, such as LAN, WAN, MiMO, Microwave and WiMAX.

Shane Bayley, Emergency Management Officer, Horizons Regional Council

3.30

Afternoon tea

3.45

CASE STUDY: The ADRA Response to the Sri Lankan humanitarian crisis (Case Study)

The humanitarian crisis that developed towards the end of the Sri Lankan civil war in 2009 resulted in 280,000 Internally Displaced Persons being housed in hastily set camps. As part of the Adventist Development Relief Agency (ADRA) New Zealand response, Mike Langford was sent to assist the ADRA country office with their response to the crisis. This session will present Mike’s experience in assisting with such a large scale humanitarian disaster.

Mike Langford, Senior Emergency Management Officer, Taranaki Regional Council

4.30

Establishing security and emergency priorities for the 2011 Rugby World Cup

With the Rugby World Cup kicking off in September 2011, it’s critical to have the capacity and plans in place well in advance to ensure the smooth running of what is one of New Zealand’s largest ever events. With a wide variety of contingencies to consider, from transport failure and natural hazards all the way through to rioting and terrorism, New Zealand needs to build significant emergency response capacity in time for the event. This session will discuss:
• The importance of an integrated, whole-of-government approach to preparations
• Establishing priorities
• Where is the extra capacity going to come from?
• The scope of the preparations so far, and the tasks to be completed

Craig Bidois, Director, Fear Free

5.15

End of day one & networking drinks

Day 2

9.00

Opening remarks from the Chair

Kristin Hoskin, Associate Director, Kestrel Group

9.05

CASE STUDY: Maintaining preparedness for a second wave influenza pandemic (Case Study)

The response by local health authorities to the swine flu pandemic was largely of a very high quality, both from a public information and a response management standpoint. This session will discuss the lessons organisations can learn from Counties Manukau DHB’s experiences to date with managing the pandemic.
• How well prepared were we for the initial outbreak?
• Border control – the good, the bad and the unforeseen.
• The Importance of good communication
• One united story and good well informed web site information
• Did we have the resource capacity to cope?

Mick Hubbard, Disaster Co-ordinator & Security Manager, Counties Manukau DHB

9.50

Maintaining preparedness for a second wave influenza pandemic

There are many prophets predicting second waves of H1N1, and opinions are divided on how important H1N1 was. Despite this uncertainty, we have to maintain community preparedness, and not to be complacent. This session will examine:
• How important real-time laboratory surveillance was and is
• Lessons learnt from the first wave in NZ and other countries
• The role Emergency Managers have to play in swine flu response
• How Emergency Management, Public Health, health providers and the broader community need to interact

Dr Tim Blackmore, Infectious Diseases Physician and Microbiologist, Clinical Leader of Infection Control at Capital and Coast DHB

10.30

Morning tea

10.50

PANEL DISCUSSION: Preparing for a Tsunami hitting NZ’s coastline – what we’ve learned from previous exercises and the 2009 Pacific Tsunami (Panel)

The Pacific Tsunami, although tragic, provided a useful exercise in testing New Zealand’s response to a tsunami event. This panel will bring together people from across the EM sector to discuss what went right, what went wrong, and the key lessons we can learn to ensure we are better prepared for next time.
• Communication & Media liaison
• The review of the domestic response to the 2009 Pacific Tsunami
• Balancing dealing with imperfect information with the need to get a message out quickly
• Examining the effectiveness of high tech vs low-tech responses
Mike Langford, Senior Emergency Management Officer, Taranaki Regional Council
Simon Murdoch, Former CEO of MFAT and DPMC
Jon Mitchell, Regional Emergency Management Office Manager, Environment Canterbury

11.35

INTERNATIONAL CASE STUDY: An integrated approach to managing disruption risk: a case study of a real model community (Case Study)

Today’s larger universities are in many respects a small town, with manufacturing, retail outlets, bars & restaurants, business parks, utility providers, transport systems; parks and gardens, farms, medical facilities, hotels and residential developments. As such they present a wide variety of risks and incidents that require an appropriate integrated approach to manage effectively. The presentation will provide a case study of how such a model community prepares for, prevents and manages incidents ranging from massed gatherings, loss of life, infrastructure failure, fraud allegations, stalking, bushfires, major accidents, threats of extreme violence and a whole gamut of commercial and business risk.

Dr Carl Gibson, Director – Risk, La Trobe University Melbourne

Unfortunately due to urgent work commitments, Carl is unable to provide us his edited material at this time. We will send out email notification if this changes. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.

12.20

Lunch

1.20

Building a resilient organisation

An organisation that has the capability to handle an emergency situation is one that will be better prepared and more likely to recover quickly, either getting back to business as usual or creating a new way of doing business, one relevant to the post-emergency environment. Resilience of this sort goes beyond simple planning.
• What is a resilient organisation?
• Dollars and sense: the business case for investing in organsational resilience
• The need for an organisation-wide approach to resilience

Dr John Bircham, Managing Director, Bircham-Global Ltd

1.50

Managing systemic risk: Bridging gaps

New Zealand’s requirements for public risk management continue to evolve in response to changes in risk environments, vulnerabilities, and community expectations. Increasingly this requires adopting a systems approach. As society, its systems (including emergency management), and its challenges become more complex we need to improve our management of these and their interactions to ensure for example consistency of decision making, smooth and efficient implementation, and smooth transfer and sharing of knowledge. Internal and external risks associated with the structure and management of these systems (systemic risk) must be addressed. The first step required is to understand systemic risk and its causes. Secondly a management methodology needs to be developed; an outline for this will be offered.

Terry Day, Director, T J Day and Associates

2.30

Raising awareness, changing behaviours: Work the Auckland CDEM group is doing to raise the profile of Emergency Management

The Auckland CDEM Group mission is ‘creating a resilient Auckland region together’. This mission emphasises the importance of an integrated effort - one of partnerships, cooperation and working together for the community.
This case study will look at work the Auckland CDEM Group is doing to encourage individual change from intention into action through:
• Raising the profile of CDEM through various media platforms
• Understanding how our diverse communities work
• Building relationships with our partners

Ben Stallworthy, Executive Manager - Emergency Management Group, Auckland Regional Council

3.15

Afternoon tea

3.30

Myaddress.co.nz – a new tool for updating location information

Spatial infrastructure, like digital infrastructure is essential to NZ’s economy. It underpins every sector throughout the country and, like digital infrastructure, will contribute significantly to productivity gains for NZ going forward.

Having accurate location data is critical for the Emergency Services. When dispatching a team to deal with an incident every minute counts when it comes to saving lives or property.

This presentation demonstrates an application using spatial information which will lead to enhanced location data being available for the emergency services sector –ultimately saving both property and lives. The online application- believed to be a world first- demonstrates the high value of spatial information, especially when enabled by broadband in both urban and rural areas.

Mike Donald, Managing Director, Terralink International

4.15

PANEL DISCUSSION: The future Emergency Manager (Panel)

In this closing Panel discussion, we look to the future shape of the Emergency Management sector in New Zealand. Bring your own thoughts and opinions and add to the value of the discussions as we explore:
• The new career progression of the emergency manager
• The development of regional clusters of excellence
• The changing role of the emergency manager and what it will head in the future
Jon Mitchell, Regional Emergency Management Office Manager, Environment Canterbury
Ben Stallworthy, Executive Director, Auckland Regional CDEM
Chris Schraders, Head of Department, Emergency Management Academy of New Zealand

4.55

Closing remarks from the Chair and end of conference