Engineers Supporting Humanitarian Outcomes in the Acute Phase of International Disasters
Recently a workshop was convened at Engineers Australia Sydney Division as part of the Year of Humanitarian Engineering that examined disaster response and resilience. The workshop was opened by Mr Dave Brunsdon who is a Director of Kestrel Group in New Zealand who spoke on “Developing a Versatile Rescue Engineering Capability and How it was Applied in the Canterbury Earthquakes”. Dave delivered an eloquent presentation which showed the journey for development of Urban Search and Rescue, Building Safety and Evaluation. The story of the journey was critical to understanding how engineers were able to respond to the September 2010 and February 2011 Canterbury earthquakes. High quality response is built upon years of preparation.
Pratarp Singh who is the President of the Fiji Institution of Engineers, was joined by Andrew Cleland CEO of IPENZ to discuss the topic of “Integrating the Engineering Effort into Disaster Management in South West Pacific”. This session highlighted the need to understand the nature of small systems in the South West Pacific, before partnering with host nation occurs when responding to disasters. Professor Kazutoshi Kan then spoke about the East Japan Great Earthquake of March 2011. This informative and topical presentation offered a first hand view of the complex emergency that unfolded in Japan earlier this year. The formal sessions were wrapped up by Dr. Marlene Kanga, who is Engineers Australia member of the WFEO Committee for Disaster Risk Management. Marlene reported on the outcomes of the recent WFEO meeting and the potentially exciting future pathways for disaster risk management.
The outcomes of the workshop are being consolidate by the Convener of the Workshop Mr Neil Greet and will be presented at the Year of Humanitarian Engineering Conference which is being run from 30 Nov to 2 Dec in Melbourne. Details and an overview are at: http://makeitso.org.au/year-of-humanitarian-engineering/conference.
