Smart Technology for Emergency Services and National Disaster Management

Speakers

• Avril Williamson Director General, NDMC
  

  Avril Williamson

  Director General, NDMC

  Ms. Williamson has been in the field of Human Resources for the past 27 years. Her experience emanates from working in diverse industries including Manufacturing, ICT, Telecommunications, Public and Higher Education Sectors, where she held Senior and Executive Director roles in large corporates such as DaimlerChrysler, SARS, BMW South Africa, Vodacom, DHA, and SRSA. These environments are highly demanding and complex. As a seasoned HR professional, she has a passion for people with interests in leadership, strategy, employee engagement, talent management and development, change management and transformation.

  Her strength lies in developing HR Strategy that is aligned to the key business objectives. She empowers people to drive and execute the strategy. She has enabled HR Practitioners to deliver a value-added human capital service that is tailored to meet the clients’ expectations. This success has been informed by sound HR Communication and HR initiatives, together with interventions and programmes that have been implemented using project management principles.

  Ms. Williamson has received several accolades, with the most recent one award to SRSA from the South African Board of People Practice, for the best overall award within the Private Sector for the period 2018.

• Blake Grace Director, Ventria
  

  Blake Grace

  Director, Ventria
• Blessing Nzuza Managing Director, RESPO
  

  Blessing Nzuza

  Managing Director, RESPO
• Boipelo Moraka Drone Pilot and BVLOS , South Africa Flying Labs
  

  Boipelo Moraka

  Drone Pilot and BVLOS , South Africa Flying Labs

  Boipelo is a manned and unmanned pilot with a Private Pilot License, Cabin Crew License and an RPAS license. She obtained her RPL in 2015 and has immense experience in the field. She also has experience in surveying, security, agriculture as well as film. She recently completed her BVLOS training and is currently working in the security industry on the coast of Richard’s Bay.

• Dr David Rosser Chief Executive Officer, UHB-United Kingdom
  

  Dr David Rosser

  Chief Executive Officer, UHB-United Kingdom

  David qualified from University College of Medicine, Cardiff in 1987 and worked in general medicine and anaesthesia in South Wales before moving to London in 1993 as a research fellow in critical care. He subsequently added the post of Lecturer in Clinical Pharmacology at UCLH to his resumé, prior to his appointment to a Consultant post in Critical Care at University Hospitals Birmingham in 1996.

  He was appointed as Specialty Lead for Critical Care in 1996; as Group Director responsible for Critical Care, Theatres, CSSD and Anaesthesia in 1999; and as Divisional Director responsible for ten clinical services in 2002.

  David was seconded two days per week to the NHS’ National Programme for IT in 2004 and appointed as Senior Responsible Owner for e-prescribing in November 2005-April 2007.

  In December 2006, David was appointed as Executive Medical Director of UHB, with responsibilities including Executive Lead for IT. He has led the in-house development and implementation of advanced decision support systems into clinical practice across the organisation.

  He took up the role of Deputy Chief Executive with responsibility for clinical quality at Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust (HEFT) in November 2015, in addition to the Medical Director role at UHB, and was appointed as Executive Medical Director of HEFT in March 2016. When the two trusts merged in April 2018, David continued in his role as Executive Medical Director and also became the Deputy Chief Executive for the combined Trust.

  David was appointed as Chief Executive of UHB on 1 September 2018.

• Ireen Mutombwa-Shumba National Disaster Manager, South African Red Cross Society
  

  Ireen Mutombwa-Shumba

  National Disaster Manager, South African Red Cross Society
• Marius Bartlett Independent Disaster Risk, Reduction Consultant
  

  Marius Bartlett

  Independent Disaster Risk, Reduction Consultant

  A highly motivated, adaptable and enthusiastic disaster manager graduate who has studied under high academic standards. Has the drive and commitment to build a successful and rewarding career in a progressive environment that offers personal and career development. Works effectively with multi-cultural teams and thrives in team-orientated environments.

• Prof Rajendra Maharaj Unit Director-Malaria Research Group, South African Medical Research Council
  

  Prof Rajendra Maharaj

  Unit Director-Malaria Research Group, South African Medical Research Council

  I have 29 years experience working in all aspects of malaria research and control. This includes research and control of both the malaria parasite and mosquito vector. During my time as a malaria expert, i have conducted indoor residual house spraying programmes, organised and participated in entomological and parasitological surveys. To assist with my research and control activities, i have utilized global positioning system (GIS) technology to identify hot-spots of malaria transmission, to direct and manage malaria control interventions and provide a management tool for use by malaria control managers.

  At a national level, I was the National malaria Control manager at the national Department of Health for 7 years. AS such I was responsible for directing the malaria control activities in the country, and on advising on policy issues. I also directed operational research that had the interests of the national programme as its focus.

  At a regional level, I was the Principal Investigator of the Lubombo Spatial Development Initiative (LSDI) a tri-country initiative between the governments of South Africa, Mozambique and Swaziland to harmonise control and treatment of malaria by implementing a standardised malaria control programme in the region. This initiative succeeded in decreasing the prevalence of malaria in all 3 countries by over 90% in five years.

  At an international level, I have served as a technical advisor to the WHO and the IAEA and I have served on technical committees for the Global Funds and on the AMFm. I am currently also a member of the Malaria Elimination Group as well as the DDT Expert Advisory Committee. I am the Co-Chair of the SARN Research Constituency as well as the Co-Chair of the Evidence and Reporting Work-stream of the Vector Control Working Group.

• Professor Ed Galea Director of Fire Safety Engineering Group, University of Greenwich
  

  Professor Ed Galea

  Director of Fire Safety Engineering Group, University of Greenwich

  Professor Ed Galea, originally from Melbourne Australia, studied at Monash University (BSc Hons, DipEd) and the University of Newcastle NSW (PhD). On graduating with a PhD in Astrophysics he worked for the BHP Research Laboratory Melbourne before moving to the UK in 1985 to take up an appointment as a post-doctoral fellow at St Andrews University.

  Professor Galea is the founding director of the Fire Safety Engineering Group (FSEG) of the University of Greenwich in London where he has worked in the area of Computational Fire Engineering (CFE) research since 1986. FSEG are developers of the EXODUS suite of evacuation software and the SMARTFIRE fire simulation software. He is the author of over 300 academic and professional publications and serves on a number of standards committees concerned with fire and evacuation for organisations such as; IMO, ISO, BSI and the SFPE Task Group on Human Behaviour in Fire.

  He also sits on several UK Government committees concerned with civil defence. He has served on several major Inquires and legal cases as an expert in fire and evacuation including: the Paddington Rail Crash, the Swiss Air MD11 crash, the Admiral Duncan Pub bombing and is currently an expert serving on the Grenfell Tower Fire Inquiry. He assisted the IMO in framing MSC Circ 1033, 1238 and 1533. His work is applied to the building, aviation, maritime and rail industries.

  Since 1997 Professor Galea has trained over 650 fire and safety professionals from 44 countries in human behaviour, evacuation modelling, fire dynamics and fire modelling through a series of annual short courses he runs at the University of Greenwich. He has successfully supervised 31 PhD and 6 MSc by Research students in fire and evacuation related studies. He is the director for the MSc By Research within the School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences at the University of Greenwich and is a Visiting Professor at Ghent University Belgium and the Western Norway University of Applied Sciences (HVL), Haugesund, Norway where he teaches on Fire Safety Engineering MSc courses and supervises doctoral students.

• Sam Twala Founder & Managing Director, NTSU Aviation
  

  Sam Twala

  Founder & Managing Director, NTSU Aviation

  I have obtained bachelor’s degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Pretoria in 2008. I have also obtained Master’s degree in Aviation from Massey University (New Zealand) in 2016.

  I worked for the South African Civil Aviation Authority from 2011 as a Certification Engineer and later joined the Unmanned Aircraft Systems department as “UAS specialist”. Amongst others, my responsibilities included development of the regulations and technical standards for Remotely Piloted Aircraft Systems.

  I served as a special adviser to the South African member of the International Civil Aviation Organization Unmanned Aircraft System Study Group and later served as a member of RPAS Panel from its inception until 2016. I also served as a member of the Joint Authorities for Rulemaking on Unmanned Systems (JARUS).

  I worked at ATNS as a Senior Systems Engineer with focus on Communications, Surveillance and Navigations (CNS) systems from 2016 to 2018.

  I am the recipient of European UVS International Catherine Fargeon award (2015).

  founder and Managing Director at Ntsu Aviation Solutions – a drone consultancy organization offering specialized consultancy and professional services to drone industry.