Global Speakers

Hon Lianne Dalziel (LLB) was elected as the Mayor of Christchurch in October 2013, after serving for 23 years in the New Zealand Parliament, the last four terms as the Member of Parliament for Christchurch East.

Lianne served as a Cabinet Minister in the 5th Labour Government under the leadership of Prime Minister Rt. Hon Helen Clark (1999-2008). During that time Lianne held a number of portfolios, including Immigration, Commerce, Food Safety, Women’s Affairs & Senior Citizens and associate roles in Education and Justice. After the change in government in 2008, she was elected to chair the Commerce Select Committee, which had oversight of the regulation of the non-banking finance sector.

The Christchurch East electorate was severely affected by the 2010/11 Canterbury Earthquake Sequence and Lianne played an important role in ensuring that her constituents had access to accurate information, as well as ensuring that their concerns were communicated to decision-makers. Lianne was invited to join the UNISDR’s Parliamentary Advisory Group on Disaster Risk Reduction in 2012. With this background, Lianne has become a champion of resilience, with Christchurch selected as one of the first tranche of cities to participate in the 100 Resilient Cities Network pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation. Since becoming Mayor, Lianne has presented at a number of conferences including:

• 2014 Emergency Management & Business Resilience Summit, Wellington NZ
• 2014 A/NZ Disaster & Emergency Management Conference, Australia
• 2014 Understanding Risk Forum, London UK
• 2015 UN 3rd World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction, Japan
• 2016 People in Disasters Conference, Christchurch NZ
• 2016 SEISMICS and the City, Christchurch NZ
• 2016 FIG Conference Recovery from Disaster, Christchurch NZ
• 2016 RICS Cities in a Digital World Conference, Singapore

Dr Brendan Anstiss is the General Manager for Strategy and Transformation at the Christchurch City Council. Brendan is passionate about using technology, innovation and human capital to make our city great. He leads the Smart City work program, the Greater Christchurch Resilience program, and is responsible for city planning, urban regeneration and design, and city and Council policy.

Prior to his role at the Christchurch City Council, Brendan was the National Commissioner for Corrections – with operational responsibility for correctional services across the county. Brendan has a PhD in psychology and practised as a clinical psychologist. Brendan lives in Christchurch with his family and loves the balance that Christchurch provides – “we’re a small enough city to be intimate, but big enough to make a difference!”

Brett is an Adjunct Associate Professor at James Cook University where he provides expert advice and education on disaster management systems and concepts.

Through James Cook University, Brett was recently involved in a project, led by the World Health Organisation, exploring global best practice associated with public health Emergency Operations Centres.

He has an extensive disaster management background coupled with experience at the State and National level which includes performing senior operational and leadership roles during the the H1N1 pandemic and the 2011 Queensland floods. Brett also performed a significant role throughout the Victorian Black Saturday bushfires in Australia and was awarded the National Emergency Medal for his efforts in helping to lead the whole-of-health response.

Professor Aimers is the immediate past Deputy Chief Commissioner for St John Ambulance Australia; whilst in this significant national leadership role he was responsible for clinical governance and the provision of influential and expert advice in relation to disaster management and training and development.

In 2016, for his sustained service to St John Ambulance Australia, Brett was recently promoted to the rank of Commander within the Most Venerable Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem.

Brett is also a National Director for the Australian Institute of Emergency Services.

Ron has a Master’s degree focused on Leadership, Culture and Change. He has post graduate qualifications in applied research and emergency management.

Ron is the Chairman of Project Wairarapa, a Non-Governmental Organisation based in Wairarapa, New Zealand. Project Wairarapa initiated a project called Resilient Carterton in late 2015. Resilient Carterton is based on The Post Carbon Institute paper, Six Foundations for Building Community Resilience.

Resilient Carterton identified Emergency Management and Civil Defence Preparedness as a key component of community resilience. Resilient Carterton initiated Project Connect to address the need for better preparedness. Ron is the Project Leader for Project Connect. He worked in partnership with the local District Council, the local Neighbourhood Support organisation, and the Regional Emergency Management Office.

Project Connect has taken an unprepared community and moved it to where there is a community emergency hub in place, it is supported by a large Neighbourhood Support Network, and the activation of the Hub has been tested in a mock activation.

Ron will share his experiences on how a community can make itself resilient to future disasters.

Terry Coleman is company director at Coleman Consulting, a leading asbestos consultancy that provides independent asbestos advice to the commercial and domestic markets throughout New Zealand and in the South Pacific under Pacifica Environmental Services.

Terry entered the demolition industry straight from school and is a second generation demolition expert. He has helped steer the development of new methodologies to help manage asbestos issues in New Zealand using his vast asbestos knowledge gained over the years in the demolition business.

Terry is also an experienced trainer, providing asbestos training courses to companies and individuals through his training brand, Safety Train. He is also a recognised asbestos speaker both in New Zealand and internationally, presenting most recently at the European Asbestos Forum in Amsterdam. He is also the current secretary and spokesperson for the New Zealand Demolition & Asbestos Association (NZDAA).

Nick has proven experience in the executive management of a wide variety of programs for private and government clients on large, complex, time critical capital programs across numerous sectors. He has contributed his knowledge and skills to the scoping, planning and delivery of projects locally and internationally as a client adviser on new build, seismic rehabilitation and risk assessment. His career has focused on commercial outcomes and the facilitation and leadership of teams to achieve outstanding results.

Darryl is a practical person more often to be found in the raw mix of change and improvement or application in disaster managements front line than the slow draw of academic or policy evolution.

A working life in Government in land management, national parks and forestry led to extensive experience in bush fire management in West Australia and Victoria and finally to a 6-year project to integrate the fire management planning of Victoria. This exposed him to the complexities of policy and practice alignment between government, its agents the business and community sector and aroused the challenge to demonstrate that with an appropriate application of logic, theory and detailed practice these could be overcome. Later, he took these experiences to Mongolia on an AVID assignment to work with the National Emergency Management Agency, an early Sendai framework adopter, within a country looking to reframe how it does business in so many ways.

Darryl continues to work on interesting projects and is currently developing all hazard risk based emergency management planning practices and tools for Tasmania, and continuing participation in the UNISDR “Words into action” project to draft guidelines for “National Risk Assessments”.

Roozbeh has more than 12 years professional experience in risk management, safety, and project planning. His core skills involve design of risk mitigation measure, design of risk & resilience strategies, utilisation of IT in emergency management, data mining and machine learning.

Roozbeh was a team member in three flood risk management projects from the civil protection of European Commission. He is also a certified crisis management staff from the Academy for Crisis Management, Emergency Planning and Civil Protection (AKNZ) in Germany.

Roozbeh commenced his PhD at the Department of Infrastructure of the University of Melbourne in July 2014, and is currently working in the Centre for Disaster Management and Public Safety (CDMPS). His work contributes to a current project from Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC (BNHCRC) which aims to identify optimum economic policy options to recover or minimize the adverse effects of floods.

Dr Fakhruddin is an expert climate change risk assessor with 15 years’ global experience in working on disaster risk and climate resilience projects. This experience is a major advantage in climate change adaptation and mitigation strategy development. His key areas of expertise are climate and hydrological assessment, early warning and emergency response, climate change adaptation, and capacity building. Dr Fakhruddin designed early warning and emergency response projects more than 25 countries in Asia and the Pacific.

Dr Fakhruddin is currently advising the Government of Samoa on potential adaption strategies for dealing with the country’s vulnerability to climate change and enhancing its resilience to hydrological disaster. He is a Science Committee Member of IRDR of ICSU/UNISDR, Co-Chair for the Disaster Loss DATA and Risk Interpretation and Applications (RIA) Working Group of IRDR of ICSU/UNISDR. He is also Co-Chair CODATA task group Linked Open Data for Global Disaster Risk Research (LODGD) and PSG member of the Coastal Inundation Forecasting Demonstration Project (CIFDP) of WMO.

Capabilities: climate and hydrological risk assessment, design and implementation of hazard early warning system and emergency communication, climate change adaptation, training and capacity building and integrated water resources management

Stephen McDonald is co-Director of the Centre for Humanitarian Leadership. He has more than 10 years’ experience in leading humanitarian responses, including in Japan, Thailand and the Ivory Coast. As Head of Humanitarian Programmes with Save the Children, Stephen was responsible for developing global tools and systems to improve Save the Children’s humanitarian response efforts.

Prior to joining Save the Children, Stephen worked in the private and government sectors, and spent a number of years in emergency services in Australia.

Stephen studied at La Trobe and Deakin Universities, and is a member of the Australian Institute of Training and Development. He has lectured on humanitarian issues at City University, London, Warminster, and the Australian Emergency Management Institute. He has also lectured on Civil/Military issues at the Australian Defence Force. Stephen’s current research examines command and control in the digital age.

Dr Unni Krishnan is Director, Emergency Health Unit, Save the Children. Emergency Health Unit (EHU- http://savethechildren.org.au/ehu)is Save the Children’s global capability to provide frontline medical assistance and health care in emergency settings. Medical doctor by training, worked in senior leadership and management positions in humanitarian agencies, and interagency/ UN panels. Undertook health and humanitarian missions to over 40 plus countries in the past 25 years.

Trained as a physician (Madras University, India), he also studied Masters in Humanitarian Action at the Central Medical University, Geneva and conflict management at Selly Oak colleges, United Kingdom. He believes he learned equally from ordinary people and children during his work in the past 25 years, spread over 40 plus countries- some of them hostile settings and complex emergencies. He provided strategic directions, leading multi-disciplinary teams, for large scale humanitarian responses in most of these settings.

He worked in senior management, leadership, governance and representational positions in international development and humanitarian agencies such as ActionAid International, Oxfam and Plan International (where he was the global head of disaster preparedness and humanitarian response) and The Sphere Project on minimum standards (where he was the Chair of the board until end 2015); and other humanitarian and health actors such as the People’s Health Movement. He has served on governmental, inter-agency, academic and UN panels and as a guest faculty in several universities. He was the co-editor for India Disasters Report series (Oxford University Press) and a member of the editorial board of the World Disasters Report (2016). He is a co-author of UN / IASC and inter-agency guidelines and publications such as the Psychological First Aid and IASC guidelines on Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Emergency Settings.

Ilan is a Professor of Economics at Victoria University and the Chair in the Economics of Disasters; a position supported by the New Zealand Earthquake Commission and the Ministry of Primary Industries. His research and teaching focuses on the economic aspects of natural hazards and disasters, and other related topics in environmental and development economics. He is also the Editor-in-Chief of Economics of Disasters and Climate Change, a journal published by SpringerNature. He worked at the University of California and the University of Hawaii, and consulted for the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, UNISDR, the International Monetary Fund, ASEAN, the Japanese Government, and the Chilean Central Bank.

Mr. Ratindra Khatri is renowned Crisis and Emergency Management professional in Nepal. Currently, he is associated with Emergency Preparedness and Response Activities managed by United Nations World Food Programme (UNWFP) Nepal, focusing on potential disasters across the country.

He participated in three United Nations Peace Keeping Missions – Lebanon (1989/90), Former Yugoslavia (1994/95) and Haiti (2009/10) respectively. He is also a survivor and responder of Haiti earthquake 2010. He was deployed before the earthquake as a Chief Military Personnel Officer of UN Force Headquarter and was the National Contingent Commander of Nepalese peace keepers serving in Haiti. He was actively contributed in search, rescue, relief and recovery operations throughout 2010 during and after the Earthquake.

He had gained practical experience of Disaster Management starting from 1988 with involving in Earthquake, Floods, Landslides, Avalanches, Fire Incidents, Hurricane, Cloudburst and Epidemics related disasters. With his past experience in the area of emergency response widely in national and international arena he actively delivered the Nepal Earthquake Response Operation 2015 very effectively and efficiently from the first day to till date.

After retirement in July 2011 from Nepal Army, Mr. Khatri has been actively involving in the Humanitarian Assistance / Disaster Response (HA/DR) related activities in Nepal. He was Executive Director of Strategic Centre for Disaster Risk Reduction Nepal. He holds a double Master’s degree in Political Science and History from Tribhuwan University (TU), Nepal. He is a PhD scholar of TU. He is a faculty member of Institute of Crisis Management, TU and Academic Counselor of Indira Gandhi Open University in Nepal. He is a Resource Person of Nepal Administrative Staff College, Nepal Army Command and Staff College, Nepal Army War College, Armed Police Command Staff College and Humanitarian organization in Nepal. He also shares his knowledge expertise and experience in different international platform.

Mr. Khatri is also an executive member of Asia Pacific Centre for Strategic Studies Alumni Association Nepal (APCSSAAN). He enjoys sharing his knowledge and expertise among the society, encouraging the youth for their professional development and his hobby is travelling in new places. He is a freelancer columnist, his numerous crisis and emergency related articles were published in National Broadsheets and International Magazines. He is decorated with Suprawal Gorkha Dakshin Bahu, UN Service Medals, Foreign Service Medal, Disaster Relief & Rescue and several other medals from the Government of Nepal.

Angus Bargh is the founder of Open Plan – an organization which continues to support the recovery and regeneration of Christchurch following the 2011 earthquake. Angus also works with agencies across New Zealand to increase their resilience and planning capabilities – with a particular focus on natural disaster planning and response. Angus is the former Chief Transport Planner for the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA) tasked with leading the multi-agency team rebuilding the transport network in Central Christchurch following the 2011 earthquake.

Angus founded Open Plan in 2016 to support the national roll-out of technology which was developed during the earthquake recovery phase to assist with the spatial coordination and delivery of physical work programs. This open data, smart-city platform represents a new approach to planning, coordination and collaboration of physical works. This approach continues to provide benefit in both business-as-usual and disaster response environments.

Angus is a chartered professional engineer (CPEng) and joined CERA in 2014. Prior to this he was part of the leadership team for the Stronger Christchurch Infrastructure Rebuild Team (SCIRT) – the engineering infrastructure alliance tasked with the $1.8b rebuild of Christchurch’s essential infrastructure following the 2011 earthquake. His role was to ensure the city kept moving while the five year, city-wide program of repairs progressed.

Prior to 2012 Angus worked as a transport planner in Christchurch and Edinburgh. Angus was a recipient of the Prime Ministers’ Business Scholarship in 2012.

Alan Wilson has been actively involved in several national committees and groups. He is an active member of the Emergency Management Information System User Group, the Capability Development Group and he assisted in the development of the Rapid training packages and the Role Map development.

He has spoken at several conferences and met with government agencies and NGOs. In 2008 Allan was offered the role of Civil Defence Emergency Management Officer for Grey District. A role he held until December 2016. Due to his teaching background he also took on the role of training officer. In 2014, along with two others from NZ, he was invited to Victoria Australia to study the recovery from the 2009 bushfires. In November 2016, he has been invited to the Freie University of Berlin to discuss food supply during an emergency.

In January 2017, he left CDEM and started his own consultancy, Emergency Management Consulting.NZ.

Stewart is a father of 4 from Wangaratta in Victoria’s north east who has had the privilege to lead in variety of environments – on the sporting field, on the fireground, in remote areas of Papua New Guinea and in the corporate / public service sectors.

Stewart has been the Operations Manager of CFA District 23 based out of Wangaratta since 2007. He played a key role in the 2002/03, 2006/07 North East Campaign fires & “Black Saturday 2009″. He has worked across a range of positions in CFA which have lead him to undertake some key roles in Victoria and Australia’s biggest emergency events, the most notable of which was the incident controller at The Kilmore Incident Control Center on Black Saturday – the day 173 Australians lost their lives.

Stewart’s main priority is to develop resilient leaders in CFA District 23 and Australian communities and he does this in a variety of ways, they main one of which is to take them on a grueling 8 day trek across one of the toughest and most iconic wartime routes – The Kokoda Track and share his life experiences. He is a trained member of Australia’s AUSMAT (Australian Medical Assistance Team) who maintains his skills by leading medical teams into the most remote areas of Papua New Guinea, taking life saving health services to where it is most needed.

The main focus of Stewart’s presentation is to take you on a very personal journey through the lead up, days of and post event scrutiny of the 7th of February 2009 – ‘Black Saturday” and talk about the challenges he faced as an individual and how he has overcome these to be a stronger, more focused and resilient person and as a flow on ..a better incident controller and manager of major disasters and emergencies.

Paul is a Senior GIS Consultant with Eagle Technology Group with a specialty in Public Safety GIS. He is also a technical adviser to the non-profit organization, National Alliance for Public Safety GIS Foundation (NAPSG), where he has led the development of standard operating guidelines, training curricula, and GIS technology integration projects. Prior to joining Eagle, he was the technical lead for the Esri Disaster Response Program and a National Park Law Enforcement Ranger in Yosemite National Park. He teaches an online course at Johns Hopkins University, GIS for Emergency Management and has taught at the University of Redlands, University of California, as well as in workshops for both professionals and volunteers, including FEMA Corps. Lastly, Paul is actively involved in related volunteer work, helping Search and Rescue Teams around the world embed geospatial decision support tools into planning and operations.

Paul has a B.S. from the SUNY College of Environmental Science & Forestry, an M.S. from Hofstra University, and a PhD from the University of California, Merced (Dissertation topic: Using GIS for Search and Rescue).

Professor (Emeritus) Christopher Kissling is a Fellow of The Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport, and a Fellow of The Royal Aeronautical Society. He completed his Doctorate at McGill University, Montreal, in 1963. He is a past Chairman of The Chartered Institute of Transport in New Zealand, and a recipient in 2003 of CILT NZ’s Norman Spencer Memorial Award for Services to the Institute and Transport.

He has held academic positions at the University of Canterbury NZ, The Australian National University in Canberra, and Lincoln University NZ. He has held visiting teaching positions at the Universities of New Brunswick and British Columbia in Canada and at Bahrain Polytechnic in the Kingdom of Bahrain. He has worked during a sabbatical for the Environment Directorate at the OECD in Paris, and spent research time at Northwestern University, Illinois, USA, and at The London School of Economics. He has consulted to UNESCAP, ICAO, APEC Transportation Working Group, the New Zealand Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (NZPECC) and on aviation and tourism for governments in Sarawak, (Malaysia) Fiji, and Samoa, besides consultancy on transport planning matters for local and central Government in New Zealand and for private businesses in Australia and New Zealand.

Dr Kissling was the Foundation Professor of Transport Studies, at Lincoln University in New Zealand. He guided the introduction of several degree programs in the fields of Resource Studies and Transport Studies writing many of the courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels for those programs. Upon his retirement he was made an Emeritus Professor by Lincoln University in 2010. He has consulted to Bahrain Polytechnic to produce courses for their successful Bachelor of International Logistics Management (BILM). He has his own consulting company, Kissling Consulting Limited.

His 2007 book, co-authored with Communications Professor Emeritus John Tiffin (Victoria University Wellington) titled Transport Communications: Understanding Global Networks Enabling Transport Services. Kogan Page, opened a new field of study. A framework derived from that book’s title for analyzing supply chains (NETS), is used to help make sense of 40 years of change in Air Transport Services in the South Pacific published as chapter 3 in Air Transport in the Asia Pacific, David Duval, (ed), Ashgate 2014.

In local community service, he is Chairman of the Christchurch Civic Trust, and a contributor of Opinion Editorials on transport matters for the Christchurch PRESS newspaper.

Roger Sutton was the Chief Executive of the Canterbury Earthquake Recovery Authority (CERA) from June 2011 until January 2015.

Before being appointed to his position at CERA, Roger was the Chief Executive Officer of Orion New Zealand Limited, the electricity utility company servicing Christchurch city and the Canterbury region. The Electricity Network was hit massively by the 2010 and 2011 earthquakes and Roger lead the teams that restored supply to the region.

Roger is a former chairman of the Energy Efficiency Conservation Authority (EECA). He is a former Director of Energy Developments, an Australian listed renewable energy developer, and Director of a number of technology and energy related businesses.

He is currently a Director of Network Tasman, Independent Line Services and a Trustee of The Church Property Trust.

He is a keen cyclist and runner with interests in renewable energy and energy efficiency.

Mr Sutton, 52, has a Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical) from the University of Canterbury is a Fellow of the Institution of Professional Engineers NZ and has attended the Advanced Management Program at INSEAD in Fontainebleau. He is married and has three sons aged 16, 13 and 11.