US emergency management specialist to speak

Aspects of emergency management ranging from incident coordination to the science of triage are the subject of a series of public lectures being hosted by Fulbright specialist Gregg Lord and the Joint Centre for Disaster Research.

Mr Lord, the senior researcher scientist at George Washington University’s Office of Homeland Security on Emergency Response and Homeland Security issues, is visiting the Wellington campus to help develop content for the new Master of Emergency Management, offered from 2012.

He lectures nationally and internationally on disaster preparedness, response and recovery as well as emergency management systems development, leadership and operations.

On Tuesday Mr Lord will evaluate the effectiveness of triage systems developed for prioritising patients and their injuries by the US Department of Health and Human Services Centres for Disease Control and Prevention.

On Thursday he uses case studies of how small and larger emergencies, including Hurricane Katrina, have been managed in the United States and how lessons learned from disasters in other parts of the world could be better applied there.

Each of Gregg Lord’s public lectures on Tuesday November 29 and Thursday December 1 respectively, is at 5.30 pm in room 4B06, Entrance B, Wallace St, Wellington.