Workshop 3: Securing the State: Domestic Agendas

About the speakers and presentations

Professor Edward Borodzicz
Professor of Risk and Crisis Management, University of Portsmouth
‘Terrorism and real risks’

Appointed Professor of Risk and Crisis Management in January 2005 Edward's interests include: risk, crisis and security management, risk and human behaviour, disaster response, socio-technical systems failure, corporate risk and business continuity, security and resilience, terrorism, transport risks in particular rail, ethnographic research and simulations and games for training. Edward has worked extensively over the past 15 years with the emergency services, local and central government agencies and large businesses.

Edward publishes in a range of key refereed journals, and recently authored a new book entitled Risk, Crisis and Security Management (published by John Wiley and Sons). Edward appears frequently in the media, on BBC television and Radio and also a variety of independent broadcasting networks and major daily journals.

Tim Randall
Director of Oxford Disaster Management Group
‘Flooding in UK, inundation in the SW Pacific : how will state and societies cope?’

Tim Randall's presentation will discuss:
1.    Flooding in UK and the impact it will have on society, notably the most vulnerable and the need for comprehensive policy and strategy that spans governmental terms of office and generations.
2.    Research into the relationship between climate change and violence (being done in SW Pacific by UNDP).

Tim Randall is the Director of Oxford Disaster Management Group, providing consultancy, research, operational support and teaching and training in relation to disaster management in the United Kingdom and Internationally.  Prior to this he was the Lead in Disaster Management at Cranfield University, and served as an officer in the British Army.  He has also worked for the UN, the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development and the UK Foreign & Commonwealth Office working in disaster and crisis management in approximately 40 countries, many of which are developing countries.  He has experience from working in conflict, DDR, and with displaced people and responses to natural disasters from a variety of international events, such as the 1999 Kosovo Emergency and the SE Asian Tsunami of 2005.   He teaches at several UK and international universities.  He has a Masters in International Human Rights Law and BSc in Civil Engineering and has published works relating to military assistance in natural disasters and complex emergencies, and genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity, and vulnerability and older people in emergencies.

He is a Fellow of the Imperial War Museum’s Holocaust Studies Programme and a Board Member for RedR Canada.  He is also undertaking a Masters in Holocaust Education at the Institute of Education, London.  He provides advice to Help the Aged on disasters and helped to design, advise and contributed to a research project run by University of Sheffield on Older People and the 2007 Floods in the UK.  He recently finished a research project with SIPRI and UN OCHA on the effectiveness of foreign military in world scale emergencies.

Rear Admiral (rtr.) Chris Parry
Strategic forecaster, broadcaster and writer
‘What happens to societies and countries after catastrophic shock?  Lessons from Iraq, New Orleans and Aceh’

Chris Parry’s presentation will discuss;
General points about historic experience.
Some words about resilience.
Case Histories - Iraq, New Orleans and Indonesia.
Governemental Approaches.
Emergency and Humanitarian Aid.
Subsequent recovery and development.
Lessons for the future.

Chris Parry is a strategic forecaster, broadcaster and writer, who specialises in current and emerging security issues.  He had a long career in the Royal Navy which included appointments in command of warships and at the head of major policy, concepts and development divisions in the Ministry of Defence.  In two senior appointments, he was also responsible for identifying and learning the lessons from military operations and catastrophic events.

Richard Flynn

Richard is a serving police officer currently seconded to the National Counter Terrorism Security Office (NaCTSO) and has responsibility for business security and resilience issues, specifically relating to terrorism. His interests include the role of good design in the built environment and how we perceive and deal with terrorist threats.

Paul O’Hare
Centre for Urban Policy Studies, University of Manchester
‘Planning for the future - Mitigating the effects of contemporary urban risks’

Governments have long been concerned with the identification and isolation of risks (both foreign and domestic) that then can then be demonstrably countered or mitigated. The most recent comprehensive attempt to do so in the UK is illustrated by the publication of a National Risk Register, which details assessments of both the likelihood and potential impact of threats that face the country.

At the same time ‘state’ bureaucracies have been charged with confronting and alleviating these risks. Beyond such activities, and in some instances helping to underline them, academics have been tasked with researching risk and threat, providing a context for contemporary perils and building an evidence base for action that ultimately aspires to redress them.

Against this backdrop, this paper draws attention to how, in response to the ‘crisis’ posed by the threat of domestic and international terrorism, and by extension, the potential threat that such developments poses for the legitimacy of the state, built environment professionals are being asked – or even ordered - to help secure public spaces. Whilst in the past, the ‘critical national infrastructure’ had been identified as being most at risk, the security services now stipulate that contemporary threats have infiltrated the ‘everyday’ - shopping centres, sports arenas, and even the high street. As such, responsibility for securing risk has been disseminated to encompass a wider range of actors and professionals.

The presentation reflects upon how the planning system (along with a broad spectrum of professional planners – from local authority development control officers, to special consultants) has been charged with quite literally ‘planning’ the domestic front of the ‘War on Terror’. Based upon ongoing research, it is argued that such efforts are fraught with efficacy concerns – not least unease that planners are at risk of being burdened with unfair responsibilities. Additionally, the profession may be captured within governmentality regimes, with planners potentially held accountable for national security through legal obligations and offered incentives to take heed of national security concerns. What emerges is a series of questions and lessons – or perhaps more accurately, a host of challenges – for planning or for similar professions attempting to develop strategies to mitigate a range of contemporary risk. 

Paul O’Hare.  Research Associate, Centre for Urban Policy Studies (CUPS) University of Manchester.  Research Interests include:  Resilient design for crowded public places. Further information: website of Re-Design Project http://www.liveweb15.bham.ac.uk/
Public engagement in the planning system and in local governance initiatives.

Dr Martin Coward
Lecturer in International Politics, University of Newcastle
‘Confronting organised violence in and against the city: what do current trends in urban securitisation tell us about how climate change violence might be addressed?’

Abstract:  In this presentation I will examine the manner in which violences in and against the city foreshadow responses to potential violences associated with climate change in the context of urbanisation. Global urbanisation will be a defining feature of the twenty-first century. The growth of cities and associated increase in city-dwellers will transform both governance and ecology. Attendant to these changes will be a novel set of violences - both against the fabric of the city and within its spaces. I am particularly interested in the violences wrought by organised violence or warfare (rather than, say, the violence of gangs or organised crime). Two types of such violence stand out as exemplary: so-called 'terrorist' strikes against critical infrastructure and so-called 'network centric' counter-insurgency operations. These violences are exemplified by the London/Madrid bombings and ongoing US military operations in Iraq. These violences have distinctive contours and either generate or represent particular responses to perceived crises or security threats. Observing the contours of such violences and the responses they generate will tell us much about the way in which urban crises will be confronted. This is of particular interest when thinking about the possible violences associated with climate change precisely because urbanity and ecology are traditionally assumed to be separate spheres. However, climate change will have a distinctive impact on the city. Learning about the way in which violences within the city are currently confronted (and the short-sighted nature of these strategies) will tell us about the emergent trends that may well be mobilised to address violences associated with climate change in the context of urbanisation.

Martin Coward is Lecturer in International Politics at the University of Newcastle, UK. He is author of Urbicide: The Politics of Urban Destruction (Routledge, 2008). His current research focuses on the contemporary relationship between the city and war.

Web site: http://www.martincoward.net/
Recently Published:  Urbicide - the politics of urban destruction, http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~content=t791601838~db=all