The Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security (CEPS) was established by the ARC in 2007 to boost policing and security research capacity in Australia amid the growing complexity and internationalisation of transnational crime in the post-9/11 environment.

The third CEPS International Conference will be held at Hilton Hotel from 6-7 October 2011 in Brisbane, Australia. The title for the 2011 conference is Risk and Resilience: Redefining Security.

The aim of this conference is to bring together state-based, national, and international policing and security scholars and practitioners to identify, discuss, and analyse our understanding of risk, preparedness and resilience. A particular focus will be given to issues relating to Australian national security and disaster management in an all-hazards environment. This conference will discuss state, national and international trends in natural and human-made disaster response by combining different perspectives on a variety of emergency situations.

Emergency as a concept can encompass a number of events such as natural disasters, armed conflict, or terrorist attacks. Responses to these events are governed by distinctly different, but frequently overlapping social, policy, and regulatory frameworks guiding emergency management strategies and practice. The concepts of resilience and preparedness are becoming more prominent in this field and will be a main focus of the conference.

Areas warranting further examination might include failures of governments to gain control after acts of terrorism, ‘all risks’ responses to national security, and emergency preparedness and regulation. Recent natural disasters, from the 2004 Boxing Day tsunami to the 2011 earthquakes in New Zealand and Japan, have also triggered local and global responses. The scale of the Japanese calamity emphasises the breadth of required responses in the aftermath of disaster. These include community response and resilience, the deployment of military personnel in civil disaster response operations, police, military and aid cooperation, communication, transport, and nuclear and economic security.

For more information, see the CEPS website (submission form here).