In a presentation entitled ‘Katrina: An Insider’s Story’, Brown will speak outside the US for the first time to give his account of the much-criticised Federal response to the costliest natural disaster in US history.
Brown’s presentation will be among the highlights of RUSI’s 2008 Resilience Conference which runs at Whitehall on 8-9 October under the banner ‘Contributions to Resilience’.
Predicated around the theme that achieving resilience in an increasingly turbulent world will be a greater task than has ever been previously understood, the conference will explore the idea that climate change and increasingly frequent bouts of extreme weather are at the fore of a range of challenges which will demand response from an unprecedented coalition of actors.
Senior policy makers and planners
Ranging in depth from the individual to international institutions, and spanning fully all sectors of the economy and public life in breadth, it is the work of identifying, prompting and co-ordinating these various contributions to resilience which RUSI will address at this year’s event.
Drawing upon leading thinkers and the most senior policy makers and planners from across all sectors of the UK and beyond, this event will be of critical value to anybody with an interest in understanding what the future resilience of the UK will require, and what their or their organisation’s contributions to resilience will entail.
To date, other confirmed speakers include:
- Bruce Mann (director, Civil Contingencies Secretariat, Cabinet Office)
- Chris West (director of UK Climate Impacts Programme, Environmental Change Institute, Oxford University Centre for the Environment)
- David Steven (director, Riverpath Associates)
- Professor John Oxford (Professor of Virology, Centre for Infectious Disease, Barts and The London School of Medicine and Dentistry)
- Sir David Omand GCB (vice-president, RUSI)
- Professor Jim Norton (commissioner, IPPR Commission on National Security in the 21st Century)
- David Burrill OBE (director, Burrill Green)
- Professor Denis Smith (Professor of Management, University of Glasgow)
- Bill Smith (director general, Civil Defence Board, Ireland)
- George Cook (CEO, Community Resilience UK)
Developing the conference programme
The full conference programme is currently under development and will be available shortly. For further details contact Tom Mortimer (e-mail: tomm@rusi.org or telephone 020 7747 2627. The event manager is Sabrina Downey.