Dr Paul Barnes is Research Fellow (Urban Disaster Resilience) at University of New South Wales. He was formermly head of the Risk and Resilience Program at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI).

Dr Barnes’ expertise includes: risk, resilience, disaster management, business continuity, organisational vulnerability, national-level risk assessment.

Dr Barnes joined ASPI as the Senior Analyst for the Disaster Resilience Program in September 2015. He was previously Deputy Director of the Centre for Emergency and Disaster Management (CEDM) at the Queensland University of Technology and led the Centre’s Infrastructure research Program.

He has wide experience in public sector and specialist management roles at both the State and Federal level.  Within the emergency services arena, he was the inaugural Manager of the State Community Safety Unit of the Queensland Fire and Rescue Authority (QFRA) where he coordinated policy support on emergency response planning and oversaw the provision of legislative support for regulatory fire safety and fire prevention. During his period with the QFRA, he chaired the National Community Education Sub-Group of the Australasian Fire Authorities Council.

As Corporate Risk Manager of the Queensland Department of Primary Industries (QDPI), he represented the Department on the State Disaster Mitigation Committee, high-level cross-government working groups on critical infrastructure protection and biosecurity, as well as the whole-of-government Multi-agency Threat Assessment Team. At a Federal level, he served as Director of Security Policy Development within the Defence Security Authority.

He has completed projects for the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) economies on gaps in counter-terrorism capability and capacity planning, and the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet on national risk assessment frameworks.