Risk and Decision-Making Conference: Call for Abstracts

The Australasian Bayesian Network Modelling Society and the Society for Risk Analysis Australia New Zealand warmly invite you to submit abstracts for their combined annual meeting. This will be held in partnership with Victoria University of Wellington on 13-14 November 2019, at Rutherford House, Victoria Business School.

The theme of the meeting, risk and decision-making, reflects on the different aspects of risks that the individual societies have addressed in the past and plays on the conference location in Wellington, the capital of and centre of government for New Zealand. However, the conference will address more than governmental decision-making. It aims to bring together researchers, consultants, regulators, and policy-makers to discuss how different aspects of risk analysis underpin responsible decision-making. Weaving in Mātauranga Māori and other First Nation knowledge improves the culturally-appropriateness of these decisions.

Risks and their management are an integral part of our lives in the 21st century. Identifying and assessing risks and their uncertainties is paramount for organisations and governments (from local to international) to be able to incorporate these risks into policies and decision-making to protect people, the environment and the economy. The Scientific Programme includes various topic streams, spanning Natural Hazards under a Changing Climate, Biosecurity, Chemical Management, Organisations and Governance, and Health.

Please visit the conference website http://www.gns.cri.nz/risk-conf-2019 for further information and to submit an abstract by 31 August 2019.

Invitation to celebrate Hans Daellenbach Prize award: ORSNZ Wellington Branch Social Networking Event

Dr Michael O’Sullivan, President of the Operations Research Society of New Zealand, invites you to join him for drinks and nibbles as he briefly discusses ORSNZ current activities within NZ and presents Professor Vicky Mabin with the ORSNZ’s premier award, the Hans Daellenbach Prize, for contributions to OR in NZ and internationally.

The award was announced at last year’s ORSNZ conference. You can read the citation here.

Tuesday 23 October 2018, 5:00 – 6:30 pm
Vic Books Café /Bar, Ground Floor, Rutherford House, Bunny Street, Wellington

RSVP for catering purposes by Tuesday noon to [email protected]

Enquiries: [email protected]

 

Brief bio:

Professor Vicky Mabin, from the Victoria Business School, specialises in the Theory of Constraints and systems thinking methods along with traditional OR to improve operational processes, organisational change, priority setting and resource allocation decisions

VUW Seminar: Insights from a Simulation Model of Disaster Response

The School of Management at Victoria University is hosting the following seminar on Thursday, 1 February 2017 from 12.30 – 1.30pm.

Title: Insights from a Simulation Model of Disaster Response

Speaker: Prof. Jose Julio Gonzalez from the Centre for Integrated Emergency Management, University of Agder, Norway

Location: RH207, Rutherford House, Pipitea Campus, Wellington

Disasters do not follow scripts and the literature strongly indicates that management of disasters requires the responder team to act as “emergent organization”.

The talk presents a system dynamics simulation model of the management of a major landslide that occurred 2005 in Norway as an outlier of Katrina. The model describes a disequilibrium-experimenting-emergence process, whereby the responder team manages the disaster as an emergent organization, proceeding from disequilibrium, to experimentation to self-organization.

A feedback analysis of the system dynamics model shows that a set of vicious reinforcing feedback loops caused by following standard organizational procedures initially increases errors in response. Eventually learning and sensemaking in an improvisation/experimentation process leads to new emergent dynamics, whereby the loops act virtuously.

We discuss to what extent the model can describe large scale disaster responses of different types and how it relates to the wider disaster response literature. We discuss what types of levers, such as policies and training, are available to decrease the vicious loops and speed the transition from errors to successful innovation.

Presenter: Jose Julio Gonzalez is Professor for Information and Communication Technology at the Department for ICT, University of Agder, Norway. He also was adjunct professor 2005-2017 at the Centre for Cyber and Information Security, NTNU Gjøvik, Norway. He has a doctor degree in natural sciences (mathematical physics) and a doctor degree in technology (polymer science). He has published in various areas of natural sciences, technology and social sciences. Since 1999, his areas of interest are security management, management of emergencies and critical infrastructure protection, where he has led and cooperated successfully in various international projects. He led the project “A Model-based Approach to Security Culture (AMBASEC)”, running 2005-2010, concerned with protection of Norwegian offshore oil & gas infrastructure. In addition, he has participated as PI in several EU projects funded by CIPS, FP7 and Horizon2020. Currently he acts as scientific coordinator for the EU Horizon2020 project Smart Mature Resilience http://smr-project.eu/home/. During the last two years he has collaborated with Auckland University of Technology in a project targeting Disaster eHealth. He was founding director of the Centre of Integrated Emergency Management (http://ciem.uia.no) at the University of Agder 2011-2014. Dr Gonzalez was awarded the Research Prize from the Agder Academy of Science and Letters in 2012 for his research on Critical Infrastructure Protection, crisis and disaster management and security.

This will be followed by refreshments.

ALL WELCOME

Any queries please email: [email protected] or [email protected]