Dr Paul Barnes is an Associate Fellow within the Global Fellowship Initiative of the GCSP. Dr Paul Barnes is Head of the Risk & Resilience Program at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. He was previously Deputy Director of the Centre for Emergency & Disaster Management (CEDM) at the Queensland University of Technology.
As an academic he has been a Lead or Co-Chief Investigator of a number of Australian Research Council and National Cooperative Research Council Grants. He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Centre for Business Continuity and Risk Management at the Hagan School of Business, Iona College, New York, and serves on the editorial committees of a number journals related to emergency and disaster management.
He has wide experience in public sector and specialist management roles at both the State and Federal levels. Within the emergency services arena, he was the inaugural Manager of the Queensland Fire & Rescue Authority’s (QFRA) State Community Safety Unit where he coordinated emergency response planning considerations for major hazardous facilities and oversaw the provision of legislative support for regulatory fire safety & fire prevention activities. During this time he chaired the National Community Education Sub-Group of the Australasian Fire Authorities Council and served on the National Community Safety Committee of that Peak Industry Body.
He also served on the State Disaster Mitigation Committee and cross-government working groups on critical infrastructure protection and biosecurity, as well as the whole-of-government Multi-agency CBR Threat Assessment Team.
At a Federal government level he served as an Adviser to the Ecosystem-based Management Working Group of the Australian National Oceans Office and was Director of Security Policy Development within the Defence Security Authority: Australian Department of Defence.
He has completed projects for the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC), the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) economies on gaps in counter-terrorism capability and capacity planning, the European Commission (European Research Agency - FP7 Program) as an independent expert evaluator of Crisis & Disaster Management research proposals, and the Australian Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet on national risk assessment frameworks.