Greater Manchester: A Local Case Study in Building City Resilience

Time

2:00 pm–3:30 pm GMT

About the event

Urban resilience is arguably a journey rather than a destination and the Greater Manchester city-region has been taking action to strengthen its resilience for over a decade. In her presentation Kathy will describe some of the pivotal moments in Greater Manchester’s work, including forging partnerships within the city-region, embedding resilience across different policy agendas, and collaborating with cities across the world. She will also reference some of the key emergencies that have shaped Greater Manchester’s approaches to resilience including flooding of 9 of its 10 Boroughs on Boxing Day 2015, the impact of winter storms trapping the equivalent of a small town on the highest motorway in England, and the Manchester Arena attack. Greater Manchester has been selected as one of only 8 areas in the country to work with Government on new ways to strengthen urban resilience and Kathy will conclude by describing the plans for the next chapter in the city region’s resilience journey.

About the Speaker

Dr Kathy Oldham OBE, Chief Resilience Officer at Greater Manchester, UK

Kathy heads up a specialist unit within the Greater Manchester Combined Authority delivering disaster risk reduction and emergency response services for Greater Manchester’s ten local authorities. She has led the development of Greater Manchester’s Resilience Strategy and provides a strategic advice function to the multi-agency Greater Manchester Resilience Forum partnership. Kathy recently led a successful bid for Greater Manchester to become a pilot in the national Stronger LRFs Programme designed to test ways of implementing the UK Government Resilience Framework.  She also leads Greater Manchester’s participation in the international Resilient Cities Network, UNDRR’s Making Cities Resilient 2030 (MCR2030) initiative, within which Greater Manchester has been recognised as a Resilience Hub, and the Counter Terrorism Preparedness Network (CTPN). She has been appointed as a Commissioner for the National Preparedness Commission. With over 15 years’ experience in resilience, Kathryn has been engaged in drafting national, British, European and International Standards on resilience. Kathy holds a medical degree and has previously held a wide range of positions in local government.