Networked Public Safety
Command, Control, Communicate: Enabling Interoperability For Optimum
Emergency Response
January 21 - 23, 2008,
Thistle Selfridge, London
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Brigadier-General Manfred Blaha has 25 years of experience in Public Safety Services and Communications, is a recognised leader within the Public Safety Community and has realised several communications and public safety services projects.
Mr. Blaha started his career as Police officer at Vienna Police HQ and after a short period as "officer on the beat" he moved to the "Telecoms Squad" as operations and maintenance technician for the PABX's. and in 1989 became First Lieutenant. Within this role Mr. Blaha designed and deployed several telecommunications systems and organised the upgrade of the city-wide analogue police radio system. In 1990 Mr. Blaha moved to the Ministry of the Interior as Deputy Head of the Telecommunication Branch for Austria's Federal Police and was promoted to Head of Branch in 1999.
Within his function as Technology Advisor for National Crisis and Catastrophe Protection Management of the Austrian Ministry of Interior Mr. Blaha was technical project manager for designing and deployment of Austrian Governments new "Emergency Operations Centre" that began operating in December 2005. Mr. Blaha covers all technical (not only telecoms) aspects from the acquisition of a room in the building, to room design, budgetary planning, technical equipment, systems integration, acceptance testing, technical and operational education, etc. Part of this project was also the deployment of a Federal Emergency Call Centre with decentralised infrastructure and call centre agents.
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Christian Sommade is the Executive Director of the French High Committee for Civil Defence and of the new "European Homeland Security Association" based in Brussels (http://www.e-hsa.org). He also works for large corporations as consultant in CBRN and Homeland security industry sectors.
As the Executive Director for the French high committee for civil defence, Mr. Sommade has re-launched 8 years ago the activity of the High committee, as one of the major think tanks in France on the issues of protection of population against catastrophic threats with a focus on WMD issues and critical infrastructure protection. The High committee is hosted by INHES (National High Studies Institute for Security) and has organized more than 35 major conferences (3 international) and 60 breakfast meetings on a monthly basis in the French Senate. (www.hcfdc.org) (http://www.defencivtv.org)
Before to be independent consultant, Mr. Sommade was in charge for 3 years, of the development of "security and defence" markets for Cegelec, a solution and services company (26 000 employees in 30 countries), with a special focus on infrastructure security for airports, ports and other critical infrastructures. Before that, Christian Sommade has spent 3 years in Washington DC (USA) to develop and promote the French CBRN defence industry on the US market of Homeland security. Before this period Mr Sommade spent 15 years in the Military and Civil Defence industry, mainly on CBRN Issues.
Christian Sommade is graduated from University Paris Sorbonne - Law & Human Science University - with a master in Public law and an Advanced Diploma in Defence; from University Paris 13 with a Master in marketing and communication. He as been Auditor of the 7th session of the High studies Institute for internal security (IHESI) of the French Ministry of Interior.
Mr. Sommade is also member of the CEPS (Centre d'étude et de prospective stratégique) and others centres. Christian Sommade is 52 years old, he lives with his wife and his 2 children in Neuilly, close to Paris.
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Richard Barnes, London Assembly Member, Chair of the 7 July Review Committee has been an elected London Assembly Member since it's foundation in 2000 and also sits on the Metropolitan Police Authority. Prior to joining the Assembly Richard was leader of the Conservative administration in the London Borough of Hillingdon. He has a particular interest in health equality issues, local government and campaigning against the Government's decision to close Harefield Hospital as a centre of excellence. He has a degree in economics from the University of Wales, Fellow of the Royal Society of Art and speaks Norwegian, Danish, Swedish and French and is learning British Sign Language. He is also a keen environmentalist who keeps tortoises, terrapins, lovebirds, a barn owl and a goose. He speaks on animal welfare issues for the GLA Conservatives.
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Mark Yates joined Cornwall County Fire Brigade in 1984 as a firefighter. He progressed through the ranks working in all departments of the Brigade, including being responsible at different times for specialist departments such as Fire Safety, Planning and Performance Management and Technical Services, as well as being a Divisional Commander. In 2002 he was appointed Assistant Chief Fire Officer with responsibility for all aspects of operational service delivery.
In 2005 Mark joined Hertfordshire Fire and Rescue Service as Deputy Chief Fire Officer and is responsible to the Chief Fire Officer for the day to day running of the Service. Mark took charge of the Buncefield incident shortly after it started and assumed the role of Incident Commander for much of the first four days of operations.
Mark has a Masters degree in Management and is a Member of the Institution of Fire Engineers.
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Hans Borgonjen is the Coordinator for International Standardisation & Knowledge Exchange at Vts Police Netherlands, which is a Dutch governmental ICT organisation founded especially for Public Safety. It delivers services on data communication, mobile communication (speech and data) and telephony. The operation of the TETRA network C2000 is also a responsibility of the organisation. In the international field Hans has had an important function in the development of TETRA. Being one of the "fathers" of the TETRA standard, he participated in the ETSI work from the beginning. He was also the 'negotiator' of Schengen to NATO, with the unique result in obtaining the harmonized frequency band 380-400 MHz. Hans has been a board member within the TETRA Association from the start and also chairs the PSRG (Public Safety Radio communication Group), an informal platform with now 15 participating countries. The PSRG has the goal to exchange information between government representatives who are responsible for radio projects.
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Research Manager Hannu Rantanen holds a Lic.Phil. in Information Technology which he received in 2003 from the University of Kuopio, Finland. He has 11 years experience in the Emergency Services College, before which he spent 15 years at the Finnish State Computer Centre. His main areas of expertise are the use of information technology in emergency response and in addition he is a member of UN Disaster Assessment and Coordination team, with particular knowledge of large scale international emergencies. Over the last 30 years he has worked on a number of international projects.
Keith Weston is a Senior Research Fellow in Counter Terrorism and Deputy Director of the Security and Resilience Group at Cranfield University, located within the UK Defence Academy. He retired from the Metropolitan Police Service in 2005, after 32 years service, with the rank of Detective Chief Superintendent, following a career in counter-terrorism. He served in both Special Branch and the Anti-Terrorist Branch. His last post was the head of the Police International Counter Terrorism Unit. In 1992, he was awarded an MA in Police Studies by the University of Exeter. In 2003, he was awarded the Queen's Police Medal, for distinguished service.
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K. Harald Drager, Oslo, Norway, is a consultant of QUASAR Consultants in Norway, offering specialist consultancy services to private and public companies in risk and safety assessment and emergency management.
He has a Master's degree in control engineering from the Norwegian Technical University in 1966, and a Master's degree from Purdue University in USA in industrial engineering in 1973.
His specialisations are risk and safety and emergency management, chemical hazard communication and project management. He has been doing consultancy work amongst others for the World Bank/International Finance Corporation and NATO, and he has been project manager of several international research and development projects for software development in risk and safety and emergency management.
He took the initiative to establish TIEMS (The International Emergency Management Society) in 1993, and he was the International Vice President of TIEMS since its inauguration until 2002, when he took over as TIEMS President, a position he still keeps.
He is among others, responsible for "Consensus Building and Forum" in the EU initiative "Public Safety Communication Europe Forum", which is a forum to facilitate communication and global consensus between all stakeholders on key public safety communication and information management systems issues.
He has published numerous papers internationally on emergency and risk management.
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Trevor Winterbottom was a police officer in Greater Manchester and Hampshire between 1975 and 2005. The latter part of his service was spent working in the Command and Control environment, where after a spell as a dispatcher he was seconded to the team responsible for the implementation of a new control room near Southampton which replaced 6 area based rooms in Hampshire. Following from that Trevor worked on the forces Airwave Project taking particular responsibility for the coverage planning and system fleet map whilst assisting in all elements of the rollout and control room configuration. After a brief period in 2005-2006 working on the TETRA system in Baghdad, Trevor took up the role of National Fleetmap Manager with what was then PITO, and is now the NPIA.
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Geoffrey Lowe served as a Police Officer with the British Transport Police (BTP) for 30 years in locations including Portsmouth, The London Underground, Birmingham and Coventry. Duties included CID and uniformed operational roles as Midlands Support Unit Commander and OIC of the Police Station at Coventry. In 1997, he was seconded to his Force 'Airwave' Team in London where he had responsibility for the fleetmap and force interoperability with all Home Office Police Forces. In 2000, the uniqueness of his role led to a secondment at PITO where he was responsible for Airwave issues in specific forces as a Police Liaison Officer. The secondment subsequently led to employment with PITO after retirement from the BTP in 2002. More recently, in 2006, Geoff was established as the PITO Interoperability and Fleetmapping Manager. Now superseded by the National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) Geoff works with his colleagues to establish the working protocols between the Police Service and all other Airwave Users.
Since his involvement with Airwave, Geoff has established the Police National Interoperability Working Group where most of the working practices and mandated protocols were set for the Police Service. He sits on several of the national police and multi agency boards and forum and most recently he has instituted the National Police Sharers Advisory Group (NPSAG) that oversees the Police Service interoperability requirements with all other sharers.
He sees the key tasks for the future as fulfilling the communications requirements with category one and two responders in line with the Civil Contingency Act and the development of exercising and training needs of the end to end interoperability process.
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Phil Godfrey is the current Chairman of the TETRA Association, an organisation that he has been involved with since its formation in 1994. He is also the owner and a Director of Arpeggio Ltd, his own consulting business, which provides commercial consultancy to the high technology industries including many involved in TETRA. Phil previously worked for Philips and subsequently Simoco Digital Systems where he was Market Development Director. Phil has enjoyed a career spanning more than 35 years in the professional mobile radio business covering sales, service, marketing and general management positions. He has been involved in the commercial development of TETRA since 1993, during which time he has been instrumental in promoting TETRA outside of Europe and has led delegations to both China and the USA.
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Sofie Pilemalm received a Ph. D. in Informatics in 2002, at the University of Linköping, Sweden, and has been employed at FOI since 2003, becoming a Senior Scientist in 2006. Dr. Pilemalm has managed and co-managed several development and research projects, including projects in the area of non-governmental organisations, the Swedish defence and inter-organisational crisis management. She has solid experience in systems development with a special focus on user-centred design and has managed user-centred design groups in various contexts. Dr Pilemalm has also authored and co-authored many scientific journal articles and book chapters. Within European R&D Programmes she has been involved in the HITS project under PASR 2006.
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Dr. John L. Clarke is Professor of defence management and strategic studies at the Marshall Center in Garmisch, Germany and is an associate consultant of The Futures Strategy Group (FSG). He has consulted on numerous strategy projects in Europe and in the United States. Most recently, he contributed European politico-military expertise and insight to Project Horizon, a US interagency long-term strategic planning undertaking organized by the Department of State. Dr. Clarke is recognized as a leading expert on Homeland Security and Homeland Defence issues. He has developed and taught numerous courses on homeland security, crisis management, and stability operations, as well as developing scenario-based exercises and simulations. He recently led a major research project on European Approaches to Homeland Security.
In a military career, Dr. Clarke held numerous positions in the national security organizations of the United States. A political-military affairs expert, he was responsible for developing the U.S. Army's doctrine for operations into the next century. In particular, he developed the Army's doctrinal response for operations such as Bosnia. In addition, Dr. Clarke served as a senior planner and crisis manager in the Joint Staff in the U.S. Department of Defence, as well as the executive assistant to the Commanding General, Fifth Army.
Dr. Clarke holds a Doktorat in political science from the University of Salzburg, Austria, a Brévet from the Ecole Supérieure de Guerre in Paris, an M.A. from the University of Southern California, a Diploma from the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College and a B.A. from Norwich University. He held a post-doctoral fellowship at Harvard University and was an Olmsted Scholar. A former Special Forces officer, Dr. Clarke commanded elite military units (parachute, commando, Ranger, armoured infantry) in combat operations in Europe, Asia, Africa and the USA.
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Andy Oppenheimer is Editor of NBC International and Editor of Jane's Nuclear, Biological and Chemical Defence. An acknowledged specialist in CBRN weapons, his main areas of expertise as an NBC analyst are nuclear technology and proliferation, threat analysis, antiterrorism countermeasures and equipment, national nuclear programmes and policies, radiological weapons, and explosives. Apart from speaking at relevant international conferences, lectures and seminars, he gives media interviews on NBC-related topics. He contributes reports to Jane's Information Group, Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), the Royal Institute for International Affairs (Chatham House), Oxford Analytical Consultancy Group, R & F International Defence & Security Consultancy, Strategic Intelligence Review, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Aviation Security International, Asian Military Review, Military Periscope, Defence Director, Global Defence Review and Chemical Biological Warfare Review. Andy has 20 years' experience in scientific publishing and government service as a commissioning editor, writer, and project manager. Born in 1953, he was educated in Liverpool, London and Belfast and is based in Hove, East Sussex. His forthcoming book on the bombing campaign, technologies and expertise of the Irish Republican Army is the basis of his doctorate and will be published by Irish Academic Press in Spring 2008.
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Tarja Mankinnen studied at the University of Industrial Arts and the Sibelius Academy up until 1996 and then joined the Ministry of the Interior, Police Department as Head of Planning. She then moved to her current role as Director of Internal Security Secretariat in 2005. Her recent achievements include: The Implementation of the Internal Security Programme (2003-2007), Local Safety Planning (2005-present), Public Private Partnership (2005-present) and being Secretary General of the Internal Security Programme (2007-present)
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Tor Helge Lyngstøl is Director General for Norway's new Directorate for Emergency Communications. He has an MSc in electrical engineering from the University of Trondheim and initially started working with implementing communication solutions in the electricity business. He was then for many years working with telephony, data communication and mobile radio in both private and public sector. He was responsible for implementing digital telephony and data communications networks in the majority of municipal buildings in Oslo including schools, hospitals and city administration. In 1998 he was hired by the Ministry of Justice and the Police to manage the Norwegian Public Safety Radio Project. Lyngstøl has managed the Norwegian Public Safety Radio project from a very early development state through evaluation, decision, specification, bid evaluation, negotiation and now implementation phase.
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Peter Kendall has been married for 38 years, with three children and three grandchildren. His career has been varied but in his late twenties joined an Ambulance Service in the North East of England and various roles within that organisation followed, including Training Manager, Quality and Clinical Interventions Manager, Divisional Commander and Emergency Planning Coordinator. Prior to becoming a Regional Health Emergency Planning Advisor he was seconded to the Department of Health (UK) to oversee Millennium/Y2K planning across the health community in the North East and Yorkshire. Peter also has a personal interest in vulnerability and the psychological impact of disasters on a community.
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Michael Elmquist has a law degree Copenhagen University and worked intermittently for the Danish Emergency Management Agency (DEMA) since 1975. Mr. Elmquist was employed with the Civil Emergency Planning Directorate, NATO, Brussels, latterly serving as Director and Chairman of NATO's Senior Civil Emergency Planning Committee. Between 1994 and 2005, Mr. Elmquist served as a senior officer in the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) being Chief of the OCHA office in Indonesia from 2000 to 2005. Mr. Elmquist has led 14 UN emergency missions worldwide. Mr. Elmquist currently works as a senior adviser with responsibility inter alia for security cooperation with countries of the former Yugoslavia.
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Steve Yates, FBCI, FICDDS, and is a Business Continuity Manager with responsibility for Disaster Recovery and IT Service Continuity for one of the top 50 FTSE Companies. He initially worked for 16 years within the Military and for Commercial organisations, before deciding to make a career change and move into Business Continuity & Emergency Management, something which he has been deeply involved with for the past 17 years.
Steve has written many articles on the subject of Business Continuity, developed & delivered training courses, workshops and spoken at major national & international conferences on a range of related subjects. He is a founder Fellow of the Business Continuity Institute (BCI), admitted to Freedom of the Worshipful Company of Information Technologists, Freeman of the City of London, Fellow of the Institute of Civil Defence and Disaster Studies and Chair of the BCI London Forum.
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John Milne has been Head of Business Continuity Management at the FSA for nearly three years. He sees his key role and that of his team as to strengthen the FSA's relationships with the firms the FSA regulates and their trade associations, with the Bank of England, HM Treasury and other parts of government and with overseas regulators in the other major financial centres in the area of business continuity. As part of that role, he represents the FSA on the Joint Forum Business Continuity Working Group which in 2006 published a set of High Level Business Continuity Principles to provide an international framework for both regulatory agencies and regulated firms in the financial sector. He was also a member of the BSI Committee responsible for drafting the new British Standard on Business Continuity (BS25999) and is a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Business Continuity & Emergency Planning.
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Dimokritos Tziritis is a Research Officer in the Research and Development Unit of Frontex Agency. He started his academic career when he graduated as Chemical Engineer from the Aristotle Technical University of Thessaloniki, Greece. He continued with a Masters Degree in "Sanitary and Environmental Engineering" in Athens. A few years later he obtained a Diploma in "Computer Programming" attending the School of Computer Programming in Hellenic Ministry of National Defense.
Dimokritos started his career as a Hellenic Coast Guard Officer in the Greek Ministry of Mercantile Marine and in his long career in the Greek Coast Guard he dealt with the IT sector and especially with surveillance systems like VTSs. For many years he was the administrator responsible for the IT infrastructure of the Ministry, and for the last four years he has been the Director of the IT Directorate. The main focus of his current role is following up with the latest technologies in the field of research and development regarding border security.
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Dr. Guy Weets received his Dipl.-Ing. Degree from the University of Brussels (ULB) in 1968. From 1970 to 1990 he worked for IBM mainly in the field scientific and engineering applications and telecommunication networks. In 1990 he joined the EC to develop new R&D programmes in the field of telematics applications of general interest. In 2000 he joined the Unit "ICT for environmental applications" where he has been in charge of the sector "ICT for Disaster Risk Management". Since July 2007 he is general manager of DRMC-Europe a consultancy company in the risk management domain. He is author or co-author of several technical and policy papers in this field. He is acting chairman of the Public Safety Communication forum an EU action aimed at promoting best practices fostering consensus between stakeholders on standardisation issues and on the roadmap for future research.
Major Simon Bergman (Rt'd) is a senior consultant with Information Options an Information Operations and Influence consultancy. He has had operational experience of Information Operations in Bosnia, Kosovo, FYROM, Afghanistan and Iraq. He was until recently the Chief Training Officer for the UK MoD PSYOPS group, and he has also supported NATO in international PSYOPS and Information Operations training and training development. Current projects he is involved with include development of UK Information Operations training and specialist support to government and commercial organizations within the influence field. He spent 22 years with the military and attained the rank of Major.
Dr. Lieutenant Colonel (res) Gil Ariely is the CKO (Chief Knowledge Officer) of the Institute for Counter-Terrorism (ICT) at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, and a senior researcher. Dr. Ariely has initiated and helped inaugurate the field of Operational Knowledge Management (OpKM) in the IDF Ground Forces from 2001 to date, and helped lead the efforts of learning during fighting in the war in Lebanon 2006. He is acting CKO (Chief Knowledge Officer) of the Ground Forces IDF, and has written the Army's doctrine book on OpKM and Learning. LtCol res. Ariely has 20 years of practical experience in the field of counter-terrorism and earned his Ph.D. at the University of Westminster, London. His thesis on "The interrelationships of Knowledge Management and Intellectual Capital", researched Knowledge Management in the IDF, US Army (as well as other organizations such as the British NHS).
His research interests are learning and knowledge-processes in terrorist organizations as well as in counter-terrorism, OpKM and learning in LIC/COIN, and Intellectual Capital. Dr. Ariely lectures on OpKM and Learning during fighting at the High Command Academic Courses of the Israel's Defense Forces, as well as other Academic and International forums. He has consulted on KM and Intellectual Capital to large organizations in Israel (e.g. IAA, NHS, IDF) and abroad (US Army, Marks & Spencer, Perot systems). GAriely@idc.ac.il