Re: Welcome!

Hi all,

I've just got around to introducing myself as well.

I am an emergency management consultant from New Zealand. I started as  
a rescue volunteer, and then decided to try and make a career out of  
emergency management and ended up starting a consulting company. Our  
company has done a lot of emergency management consulting in New  
Zealand, with a lot of focus on planning and exercising. Our company  
is currently neck-deep in assisting the delivery of our third all-of- 
government exercise in New Zealand. Being a consultant has given what  
I think are incredible opportunities to observe emergency management  
from within a growing number of different organisations, and I believe  
that has given me some valuable insights.

I have always been strong in IT, with my first computer experience  
being a BBC Model B in 1982. Let's just say I haven't been far from  
computers since. Before I became a rescue volunteer I was a technical  
director at a web development company in 1996-1997 and I built New  
Zealand's first online pharmacy store.

Over the years I've completed a number of qualifications that have  
been very useful to the intersection of disciplines of this group.  
These include BCom (Information Systems), BSc (Management Science),  
Graduate Diploma in Emergency Services Management, and a Postgraduate  
Diploma in the Arts (Geographical Information Systems).

I was involved in a failed attempt to create an open source disaster  
management information system in 2003, but this failed due to a lack  
of drivers. When I found out about Sahana soon in January 2005 I  
starting contributing to the project (in terms of advice, not code)  
and have since become a member of the Board, and of the Project  
Management Committee.

It has been both through my dealings with clients and work on the  
Sahana project that I have become interested in standards for  
emergency management and I see the urgent need to map out existing  
standards to identify gaps that need further work. I am starting to  
get involved with the State Services Commission in New Zealand - our  
government agency that is responsible information standards in New  
Zealand, and I believe they are very interested in thei working group.

I look forward to the day where the emergency management standards are  
able to support a heterogeneous, federated network of different DMIS  
that are capable of being truly networked and interoperable, but can  
be customised and deployed to suit each organisations distinctive  
organisational and IT needs.

Cheers Gavin

-- 
Gavin Treadgold - Director
gt@kestrel.co.nz - M +64 21 679 335
Christchurch Office - New Zealand - P +64 3 343 6169 - F +64 3 343 6161
Kestrel Group - Risk and Emergency Management - www.kestrel.co.nz

Received on Tuesday, 26 February 2008 01:19:25 UTC