Insurance is widely recognized as being fundamental to the ability of communities and even countries to recover more quickly from disasters. Where government aid flows slowly, insurance operates more quickly. Where government aid only helps address basic needs, insurance can more fully indemnify home and business owners, allowing them to fully recover. Insurance can also help governments, by putting money in their hands quickly allowing them to address critical needs post disaster. Government aid programs contain no incentive to mitigate risk, but because insurance pricing is tied to risk, it rewards mitigation and helps create a culture of resilience

The Regional Resilience Assessment Program (RRAP) is a comprehensive risk assessment program for owners and operators of Canadian Critical Infrastructure (CI). This program features site assessments to help organizations measure and improve their resilience to all hazards in Canada, such as cyber threats, accidental or intentional man-made events, and natural catastrophes.

It is well recognized that one of the most cost-effective way to prepare and confirm readiness of an organization and its plans to deal with events is to exercise. Unfortunately, it is also true that exercise is often neglected in most emergency management programs. How many organizations have a fully funded, multi-year exercise program? Who has an exercise program linked to performance metrics and can track the return on investment for every dollar spent on training and exercise? Who works for an organization where senior management is afraid of pushing the envelope by fear of looking bad during an exercise? What about the feeling of being stuck in the infamous lessons learned trap? Would you be shocked to discover that most organizations have adopted the flash in the pan approach to exercises and have no dedicated resources to support the planning and conduct of exercises? In this presentation, Richard will share his personal experiences, best practices, point out some challenges and trends while sharing some strategies to get the most from your investment in exercises while directly contributing to building resilience in your organization.

The recent laudable focus on helping persons exposed to potentially traumatic events has raised important discussions about potential preventative measures that may help mitigate the impact of such events on mental health. The discussions have often focused on developing, maintaining, or recovering resilience. Indeed, there are now several different training programs available that have been designed to influence resilience. The current presentation will provide a foundation for understanding the complex opportunities associated with resilience, starting with the discourse on defining individual, group, and systemic resilience relative to other constructs, such as resistance and self-care. The presentation will then offer a broad overview of current peer-reviewed research associated with resilience and the important opportunities for innovation and development going forward. The presentation may raise more questions than answers but will conclude with high-level recommendations for facilitating evidence-based best practices.

In the after-action review of almost every major emergency management event, two themes almost always emerge: Leadership and Communications. In this talk, Trefor will walk you through a framework for leadership along with the corresponding best practices and emerging “next practices” that will define the future of leadership in emergency management.