My role in Emergency and Preparedness

After one month of absence from this blog I finally decided to dedicate this post to my new position.
December 21st 2009, it was my first day as Deputy Director Emergency and Preparedness with New York State, Department of Health. I left the United Nations World Food Programme where I was working as Senior Field Security Officer, specialized in Security Risk Assessments and Risk Management. As you probably know reading my previous articles I have been deployed in several countries in almost all continents (excluding Oceania). I am so thrilled to have embraced this new challenge in New York.
I have finally the chance to enrich my professional expertise through a different emergency perspective/approach compared with the one I was used to while working in developing countries with the UN. As UN planner and risk assessment specialist I had to take into considerations factors like political instability, terrorism, criminality, social/economic insecurity etc, common elements in developing countries. These elements heavily influence the emergency/security/response planning and implementation. The final emergency structure which will emerge will have to provide the proper safety and security features to those humanitarian operators deployed everywhere in the world.
Here in New York the above mentioned factors are almost inexistent so that the planner can dedicate all the available resources and his/her own energies to the core business, the protection of the people, the structures, the assets under his/her responsibility when a disaster hits. The unfortunate sad events of 9/11 and the Hurricane Katrina demonstrated how important are planning, preparedness and training. I have decided to approach the concepts of emergency, safety, security and preparedness commenting real life cases, not related to my job/profession. This way the objectivity and the "right distance" from the events will be preserved in order to provide a unique perpective as my vision of the future of emergency management.

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