A Growing Industry: More Companies And People Are Realising The Need For Emergency Preparedness Planning And Travel Risk Management.

As part of our "Operating in Complex Security Environments" Networking Programme, Aprodex talks to Shaun Boulter, Director of Security at Assistance Alliance International (AA International Inc).

What is your background, and how have you developed your International Security and Risk Management career?
I am considered a specialist in all aspects of security and crisis risk management, including travel risk management. Prior to joining the AA International I was head of Crisis and Security Risk Management at RISQ Group based in Singapore, Prior to this I was also the European and Asian Security and Risk Manager for Perot Systems based in London, managing Europe and India where i also headed the Crisis Management Team. During this time i was responsible for developing and implementing the business continuity, security and risk management plans and operations in Europe and India. I have also gained extensive experience in Close Protection and Security Advisory roles. I was a security advisor and protection officer to the Qatar Foreign Minister for a period of four years, during which I travelled extensively on a global scale working and liaising with many foreign governments and security forces.

I have also performed a variety of other security related tasks such as surveillance operations, security surveys and close protection related tasks to members of foreign royalty and corporate VIPs in Europe, US and the Middle/Far East whilst being a senior consultant for Control Risks and also Red24. I was previously a member of the British Military for twelve years achieving the rank of sergeant, where I specialised in counterterrorism in Northern Ireland, the Middle East and Asia. I hold an MSc in Security & Risk Management from the University of Leicester. I am also a Singapore licensed Private Investigator and Security Officer. During my time in the military I was awarded the Queens Gallantry Medal.

What does your company do?
AA International (AAI), Headquartered in Kuala Lumpur, is an assistance company and a member of the International Assistance Group (IAG). AA International operates from offices located in Kuala Lumpur, Bangkok, Manila, Jakarta, Singapore Hong Kong, Seoul and Taipei.

The founding member company Asia Assistance Network (M) Sdn Bhd, was formed on 20th October 1998 is a 24 hours assistance company providing assistance services ranging from Medical Assistance, Security Assistance, Car Assistance, Third Party Administration Services, Home Assistance, Customer Service Assistance and other customised assistance services.

AA International, is today servicing over 5 million members, amongst our clienteles are over 30 major Insurance Companies, Airlines, as well as Corporate, Banks and Credit Cards companies throughout the region. AA International offers value added services in the form of comfort and security that help is just a phone call away. In turn, by ensuring that your Members quickly receive the best assistance available, AA International reduces the risk and cost of personal safety and operations locally and abroad.

Our 24 hours operations centre is managed by a team of dedicated staffs with multi language capabilities; our team of professionals is trained to handle security, medical, logistical and technical aspects of crises, minor and major emergencies with the efficiency and compassion that such events require providing round the clock assistance to your Members.

AAI also owns its own Air Ambulance service with two Lear Jet aircraft based in Asia (Singapore & Taipei), these aircraft operate under the brand name AeroMed Asia.

AAI provides solutions to members travelling worldwide. AAI is a Member and shareholder of the International Assistance Group with 36 offices and 46 round the clock alarm centres worldwide.

What are the biggest challenges your company faces today?
Remaining ahead of our competitors, so we always strive to provide a service that is flexible to fit with our clients requirements and allowing where possible for clients to have direct access to single points of contact and in so doing giving them a more client friendly boutique service.

How has your market changed in recent years, and how have current trends and developments affected the way your business operates?
The market has changed to our benefit as more and more companies and people are realising the need for emergency preparedness planning and travel risk management. Which is the reason our company is always looking to ‘build business for tomorrow’. We are constantly analysing what the threats are to companies and individuals at both their home location and also overseas. This then enables us to build and plan new services to meet these challenges head on and in so doing preparing and assisting our clients to be able to suffer minimal disruption to their operations.

What are your 5 year predictions for the development and innovation of your industry sector?
We foresee our company spreading further across the region as we engage more clients (such as the larger insurance companies that have regional presence). We allow our new clients to drive our growth in the region for this purpose as most of the larger insurance companies want and require a local presence to handle their policy holders. We are constantly looking at new products we can tag onto our services or clients policies that they sell to enhance our portfolio and also theirs.

What additional services do you procure to support your operations, and how do you source new suppliers?
We procure the services of our partners in the International Assistance Group (IAG) to support us with clients of ours who require assistance services in parts of the world that we do not have a presence. We also use tried, tested and vetted security consultants and consultancies to allow us to have a multiple tier of service providers we can call upon in the time of an emergency to help us support our clients on a global basis.

All our providers are normally sourced by recommendation or previous history with our company or a member of our team.

We are always looking for companies that have good synergies with us to either look at working together or to form partnerships so that we can provide more services to our existing and new clients.

What are your favoured technologies / equipment / “tools” for operating in Complex Security Environments?
Good intelligence is our primary state of the art technology service and this is done through a combination of both automated word search software and also physical analytical manpower. The combination of both automated and physical we believe allows us to be able to provide confirmed and verified proactive and reactive information to our clients. We understand there is a necessity to provide an analytical view and solution to each news alert we provide being of paramount importance so that a client can make an informed decision as to what to do with that information.

What products / services do you consider to be deficient in your area of expertise?
We can never have enough service providers on our books that can support us around the world in the time of a crisis. We are constantly looking for people and also companies that we can work with for such projects.

Technologies in the form of apps, travel tracking equipment be it travel itinerary monitoring systems and or GPS are constantly improving and developing new platforms to operate from so we are constantly monitoring technologies as they develop to see how we can integrate these technologies to improve and enhance our current range of services.

Internet business networks, such as Aprodex, enable a 24/7 capability to reach new clients and solicit new opportunities. Building a corporate presence and reputation on line is becoming ever more important - and unavoidable. What corporate communications methods do you employ to reach your target audience and what strategies do you have to increase your on line presence?
At present this is something we have only just started to look into and have considered the use of social networking such at Twitter. There are problems associated with this in that one bad comment will negate no matter how many good ones you have received. To date we have relied heavily on our marketing team and educating people as to who and what we are and allowing them to view our website and also to trial our travel risk management website.

Comment / Ask Questions about any issues related to the Interview via our . Shaun is specifically interested to hear and share information regarding evacuations in the Middle East over the last year as everybody who has been conducting evacuations from Syria, Egypt, Bahrain etc has experienced some difficulties. It would be ideal to learn from the experiences of others.

To comment Please Go To The Interview

More Interviews on "Operating in Complex Security Environments"

If you wish to be featured in our "Operating in Complex Security Environments" Networking programme, send an email (Subject: SPOTLIGHT Interview) to info@aprodex.com to request the interview questionnaire.

CCA Consultants Launches New Service "Pandemic Preparedness - External Review"

CCA Consultants launches new service "Pandemic Preparedness - How prepared is your Business?"

Our experienced team of pandemic response planners will review the current status of a company's preparedness.

The team will suggest strategies developed in both public and private sector planning to reduce the impact of a pandemic on the business. A 2 day external review involving a number of interviews with key managers will take place. The findings will be collated and delivered as presentation to the company's management team on day 2.

The full review will be delivered as a post visit confidential report to the company.

For more information contact info@ccaconsultants.eu

See CCA's Profile

Next Generation Resilience Relies On Citizens And Communities, Not The Institutions Of State...

Resilient Nation, by Charlie Edwards

Demos

Introduction

We live in a brittle society. Our just-in-time lifestyles provide most of us with a seemingly infinite number of goods and services. This is made possible by greater social and economic interdependencies and mass communication. Over 80 per cent of Britons live in urban areas relying on dense networks of public and private sector organisations to provide them with food, water, electricity, communications and transport. For much of the time this lifestyle poses us few challenges, but it relies on an infrastructure that is outmoded and archaic, and which increasingly lacks the capacity to support our complicated lives. Food supply chains, sewerage systems, electricity grids and transport networks are part of the UK’s critical national infrastructure and have become progressively more interconnected and reliant on information and communication technology. In the past two decades these ‘essential services’ have been privatised. Today some 85 per cent of the critical national infrastructure is owned by the private sector, adding another layer of complexity to the brittle system. Our everyday lives and the national infrastructure which they rely on operate in a fragile union, vulnerable to even the smallest disturbances in the network.

Both are part of a global ecosystem, which is increasingly impoverished and can withstand very little force of change. This has created an environment of extremes, notably the heat wave across Europe in 2003, the widespread flooding of the UK in 2007 and the snow storms over much of the country in 2009. Extreme weather events are becoming more frequent and intense, disrupting our everyday lives and causing system failure across the national infrastructure. Together, these three dimensions (our lifestyles, the national infrastructure and extreme weather) make up our brittle society.

As a result we need to rethink the concept of resilience in a way that resists the temptation to think only in terms of the ability of an individual or society to ‘bounce back’ but suggests a greater focus on learning and adaptation. In a new definition of this concept, responsibility for resilience must rest on individuals not only on institutions. Resilient Nation raises some profound challenges and issues around the role of individuals and communities in the UK, and the relationship between the state and citizens.This pamphlet is about how we can build and sustain community resilience with support from central and local government, relevant agencies, the emergency services and voluntary organisations.

Chapter 1 explores the role of education in building resilience and describes how Tilly, a schoolgirl holidaying in Thailand, saved her family and hundreds of tourists because of a geography lesson she remembered.

Chapter 2 describes in more detail how our society has become brittle. According to Richard Mottram, the former Permanent Secretary, Intelligence, Security and Resilience in the UK government, recent emergencies have ‘exposed the Government’s inadequate understanding of societal interdependencies… resting on just in time principles, or the way in which response actions in one area could have greater, unintended consequences in another’.

Chapter 3 explores how risk communication gets lost in translation and challenges the dual notions that human beings are rational and they panic in an emergency. Both notions appear to be false. Thousands of Americans decided to drive instead of fly after 9/11. The collapse of the two towers was still a vivid memory and driving in contrast must have felt much safer. In the years that followed 9/11, Gerd Gigerenzer, a psychologist at the Max Planck Institute in Berlin, patiently gathered data on travel and fatalities. In 2006 he published a paper comparing thestatististics of the number of people flying and the numberdriving in the US five years before the 9/11 attacks and five yearsafter. It turned out that the shift from planes to cars in Americalasted one year. Then traffic patterns went back to normal. Gigerenzer also found out that, as he had expected, fatalities on American roads soared after 9/11 and settled back to normal levels in September 2002. Gigerenzer was able to calculate the number of Americans killed in car crashes in one year as a result: 1,595. Not only are humans predictably irrational, as Dan Ariely suggests, but according to Amanda Ripley, ‘people rarely do hysterical things that violate basic social mores. The vast majority of the time… people don’t panic… the fear of panic may be more dangerous than panic itself.’ More importantly, as Ripley observes, the enduring expectation by officials in government, the emergency services and the mainstream media that people will panic leads to all kinds of distrust on the part of neighbours, politicians and police officers.

Chapter 4 describes the evolution of emergency planning and the role of the voluntary sector since the end of the ColdWar. The idea of the UK as being a well-organised, welldefended and resilient country during the Cold War is, on closer inspection, largely a myth but one still propagated by politicians and the mainstream media.

Chapter 5 describes the role of volunteers in a village in north Norfolk, which was struck by a storm surge that hit the East Anglian coast in November 2007.

Chapter 6 reveals the powerful networks that criss-cross the UK supporting hundreds of thousands of people. The chapter focuses on the Farm Crisis Network, the role of faith communities and the myriad of governance networks that exist in the UK.

Chapter 7 explores the potential of social media in emergency planning and disaster management and explains why the Los Angeles Fire Department uses Blogger and Twitter, and how thousands of people got together virtually to track Hurricane Gustav.

The final chapter suggests an approach to building a resilient nation. Instead of comprising a list of recommendations, the chapter describes how government departments, relevant agencies and local authorities can shape and influence existing models of best practice around the country by adopting the four Es of community resilience: engagement, education, empowerment and encouragement.

Access Full Report

charlie.edwards@demos.co.uk

High Risk Of 'mega-disasters' In Asia-Pacific

A new analysis of the likelihood of volcanoes and earthquakes to cause future "mega-disasters" in the Asia-Pacific region says these events may affect many more people than previous estimates suggest.

Vast cities such as Manila in the Philippines – with 18 million residents – are particularly at risk, according to the analysis, completed by government agency Geoscience Australia.

The report is to be revealed today at the Australian Earth Sciences Convention 2008 in Perth.

Focus on people, not records
The research looked at the impact of earthquakes and volcanoes on densely populated cities in the hazard-prone Asia–Pacific region. Disaster research in the region has increased since the Asian tsunami in 2004, which was triggered by a magnitude 9 earthquake and killed more than 225,000 people.

Most earthquake and volcano risk analysis is based on historical records which go back only a few hundred years. Extreme geological events on the other hand may strike every few thousand, or even hundred thousand years. Risk estimates based on historical records also don't account for recent demographic changes, the researchers say.

Populations are continuing to rise in the Asia–Pacific with most people packed into densely populated cities. This new analysis pinpoints areas most likely to be at risk and evaluates the potential disaster impact.

"There has been a vast increase in the number of people and their vulnerability [to natural disaster] has tended to increase, with increasing population concentration in cities and mega deltas, which are subject to flooding and cyclone hazard," said Phil Cummins seismologist and co-author of the report. Cummins is project leader of the Earthquake Hazard and Neotectonics group of Geoscience Australia.

"As far as I am aware, until now there has been no analysis of the impact of such events [geological disasters] on present day or future populations," he said.

Rough estimate
The new results are part of the Geoscience Australia Natural Hazard Impacts Project and were prepared for the Australian government's overseas aid agency AusAID.

Data came from global earthquake catalogues and the Smithsonian Institution's Global Volcanism program. To calculate the risk, the researchers drew a rough circle around dormant volcanoes, representing the area that could be hit by ash fall of up to 30 cm in depth – enough to collapse a roof.

For earthquakes, the researchers looked at the probability a quake would occur at a distance close enough for ground motion to impact the city.

Cummins said it was a rough analysis because the calculations they used, such as the spread of ash fall, was in reality much more complex. But he added that it was important to give organisations some idea of what might reasonably be expected in the region.

Much of the Asia–Pacific region sits on the tectonic plate boundary between the Australasian and Indian plates and has seen some of the world's worst natural disasters.

"What's fairly new about the analysis is looking beyond the physical consequences of geological hazards and trying to get some idea of what the impacts might be on populations affected by natural disasters," said Cummins. "Infrastructure [in cities] can be very fragile and there are also very dense populations in some cities such as Dhaka, Jakarta, or Manilla."

Article appeared on Cosmos

Disasters may be inevitable, but their effects can be mitigated

We are reminded, increasingly these days, of nature’s potentially destructive power. Cyclone Nargis in Myanmar, or the earthquake in Sichuan province of China, left hundreds of thousands of people dead and millions homeless.

Visiting these sites recently, I saw shattered lives and a devastation that will take years to repair. As catastrophe piles on catastrophe, we could be forgiven for concluding that humanity is the helpless victim of nature. Yet that would be tragically wrong. Our capacity to cope with natural disasters is, in fact, much greater than we realise.

Almost as dangerous as the cyclones or earthquakes themselves is the myth that the destruction and deaths they cause are somehow unavoidable, the inevitable result of natural calamity.
True, we cannot prevent the events themselves. But we can determine our response, and, through our actions, either compound disasters or diminish them.

The difference is preparedness and prevention. This may be a hard truth, for it emphasises foresight and advance planning, and not merely the emergency relief that dominates headlines when crises hit.

Experts in “disaster risk reduction,” as they call it, specialise in limiting humankind’s vulnerability. By taking the right steps early, we can save lives and livelihoods that would otherwise be lost.

Consider Bangladesh – like Myanmar, a densely populated low-lying delta, vulnerable to storms. Cyclone Bhola in 1970 claimed as many as half a million lives.

After another 140,000 perished in 1991, Bangladesh put in place an extensive early warning system, coupled with robust programmes for community-based disaster preparedness, evacuation, and mitigation.

When Cyclone Sidr hit in 2007, the deaths numbered not in the hundreds of thousands but just over 4,000. Myanmar, which had not seen a cyclone of Nargis’s power in living memory, had no such arrangements in place.

Other developing countries are following suit. Typhoon-prone Philippines and Madagascar have shown that small but prescient investments in building, planning and training can yield remarkable results.

Community-based projects in Nepal and India’s Uttar Pradesh have used risk-mapping to retrofit schools against earthquakes, while simultaneously training local builders in techniques of disaster-resilient construction.

Education is key. In the Philippines, teachers, students and parents receive instruction in basic principles of risk mitigation and preparedness. Thailand is turning students into agents of disaster risk reduction, spreading a culture of prevention into the community while teaching children strategies for protecting themselves.

Latin American and Caribbean nations lead the way in safeguarding hospitals and health facilities, so that when disaster strikes, the doctors and clinics can work when needed most.

All this is now more crucial than ever. With climate change, the number and intensity of weather-related disasters will increase.

Losses (human and financial) nearly doubled from 2006 to 2007. For the poorest countries, obviously, the devastation can be especially crippling: the loss of homes, jobs and educational prospects traps people in poverty.

Hurricane Mitch, in 1998, swept away decades of development in Honduras over the course of just a few hours.

All countries, from the richest to the poorest, should build disaster risk reduction into their development and poverty reduction strategies.

There are many possibilities for co-ordinated global action. International donors should support the trust funds established to help poor countries cope with natural disasters, such as those set up by the World Bank and the UN.

The Hygo Framework for Action, negotiated in 2005 in the wake of the tsunami, sets out priorities for disaster risk reduction and calls upon the international community to take practical steps to make communities safer.

These include strengthening flood prevention measures and early warning systems, and applying relevant building standards to protect critical infrastructure such as schools, hospitals and homes.

We must also protect precious ecosystems like coral reefs and mangrove forests that act as natural storm barriers.

With the annual hurricane season uponus, we all hope that disaster will not strike. But it will, as we know, and then we will count the dead and rush to the aid of those who survive. Let us remember, though, that it need not necessarily be so.

Article appeared in NationMedia.com