Emergency planning, resilience, business continuity and risk reduction are the activities we plan, practice and train for in the hope they will never be needed. They mitigate the worst when it happens and bring assurance and stability when it does not. However, the threats presented to normal order are magnified by local, national and international events which can bring instability to our own front door. The consequences of globally linked economies in bad times. The potential public health effects of diseases on intimately linked societies. Open and interwoven digital worlds across national borders. A destabilised international order. Increasingly turbulent effects of climate change. The impact of economic downturn on lower public investment and safety and quality outcomes. Then there are the kinds of accidents and disasters which can occur in good or bad times. So how do we plan for the unexpected, ensure that we learn from every opportunity, collaborate to maximise best practice and keep our emergency planning and resilience practitioners, and our responders at every tier, well-resourced and able to prevent and react?
Emergency planning in Scotland has come a long way in the last 25 years. From a period in which some may have thought that civil contingencies and emergency planning were, to some extent, becoming a Cinderella service after the end of the Cold War, we are now in a completely different world. It is unimaginable that trying to minimise emergencies and disasters through prevention and good practice, maintaining resilience in the face of major and minor incidents and responding quickly and effectively to such occurrences would be anything other than a core activity for all public sector agencies and most in the private and third sectors too.
Since the turn of the millennium, civil contingencies preparadeness has heightened and continued to grow in importance. The need to plan for the Y2K 'millennium bug' in 2000 and the attack on the World Trade Centre in 2001 were perhaps the two events which initially triggered a new awareness of the critical importance of resilience and emergency planning. Since then, a succession of terrorist incidents, natural disasters, major accidents, extreme weather climate-related events and, most recently, COVID pandemic have seen our systems, responses and resilience repeatedly needed and tested.
So, what lies ahead for our resilience and emergency planning community and its professionals, practitioners and structures? What are the challenges they may need to respond to and how can they harness best practice and collaboration to anticipate and meet the tests in coming months and years? What resources and structures, awareness and systems, and anticipation of a constantly changing world and its threats will they need to combine?
This conference examines the responsibility ahead for Scotland's resilience and emergency planning community in meeting current and future demands in an uncertain environment where finance, risk, global instability and climate change combine to present constantly evolving challenges. Against this backdrop the conference will focus on three broad themes:
Topics to be discussed
Professor of Climate System Science, Department of Meteorology
University of Reading
09:00 Chair's opening remarks
Session 1: Where have we come from and where are we heading?
09:05 Keynote speaker
09:20 Question and answer session
09:30 Reflections on recent emergency planning history and resilience today
09:45 What's coming next - planning for knowing the unknowable
10:00 Question and answer session
10:10 Comfort break
Session 2: Key themes and practitioners
10:25 Public safety and public bodies
10:40 Cyber vigilance and preparedness
10:55 Policing, multi agency co-operation and resilience
11:10 Question and answer session
11:25 Comfort break
Session 3: Case studies and staying up to date
11:40 Climate change, extreme weather and risk - understanding what we are facing
Profe Nigel Arnell, Professor of Climate System Science - Department of Meteorology, University of Reading
UniRdg_Met
11:55 Learning from pandemic and preparing for the future
12:10 From resilience to emergency alert - containing risk
12:25 Question and answer session
12:40 Chair's closing remarks
Professor Nigel Arnell
Professor of Climate System Science, Department of Meteorology
University of Reading
Research interests:
Research projects:
This conference will take place online.
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