Charlie Edwards
Senior Researcher
Charlie Edwards writes, lectures and consults on national security, resilience, defence and intelligence. He works with international institutions, government departments, companies, and NGOs. He is a regular commentator in the national and international media.
- Metrostrategy Yesterday I spoke to 120 senior officers at the Australian Command Staff College on national security. After the main Q&A session the topic of conversation moved onto new theatres of conflict. Someone suggested that the armed forces would have to focus more on cities, as a result of increasing urbanisation globally. Urban warfare is an area I am not very familiar with. Fortunately Michael Evans, a fellow at the Australian Defence College has just written an excellent pamphlet on the subject - City without Joy. continue reading on 26th July 2008
-
Lessons from Australia
Australia has a first class emergency management system but any emergency puts strain on that system. The more that we as individuals can do to prepare ourselves, the more effectively the emergency services can direct their resources.
I'm in Australia next week and will be talking to various people who work in the resilience field. Will report my findings here. continue reading on 18th July 2008 in Resilient Nation - Clay Shirky, knife crime and the self policing society Clay Shirky spoke at Demos today (get the podcast here). Unfazed by jet lag and our infamous coffee, Clay answered a flurry of questions including one I managed to sneak in on knife crime. Could social software, I asked, help stop the current spate of knife crimes in London? Before I’m accused of suggesting that Twitter may be the missing tool in the Government’s fight against knife crime, consider the subject of Clay’s new book Here Comes Everybody. In a nutshell it’s about what happens when people are given the tools to do things together. continue reading on 15th July 2008 Comments (2)
-
Community resilience - a nudge in the right direction?
From BBC news:
Homeowners need to be more aware of the risk of flooding even if they have never experienced it, says the head of Wales' flood defence strategy body. Some half a million people live in areas which need to "further develop resilience" to flooding, says the Flood Risk Management Wales Committee (FRMW). Chair Geraint Davies said: "Sometimes it's difficult to bring people to believe that they are at risk." continue reading on 12th July 2008 in Resilient Nation -
Here Comes Everybody
Clay Shirky is speaking at Demos this coming Monday. Event details here.
If you haven't read his new book Here Comes Everybody then you should stick it on your list for summer reading. If you can't make it to the event we'll be podcasting Clay's presentation - you can see other presentations here and here.
continue reading on 9th July 2008 in Demos Website - Demos downloads Last year 720,000 pamphlets were downloaded from the Demos website. Our resident stat-o-holic (who will remain nameless) has been viewing the list of downloads and has kindly passed me the list. The top downloaded pamphlets written by us in the last year are: continue reading on 9th July 2008 in Demos Website
-
Power returns following blackouts
From the BBC:
Electricity supplies have returned to normal following countrywide blackouts on Tuesday, the National Grid has said. Hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses across London, Cheshire, Merseyside and East Anglia lost power. Blackouts were caused by Sizewell B nuclear plant in Suffolk and Longannet coal-fired station in Fife going off-line within minutes of each other. Storms overnight have left some people still without power but operators have said they are working to restore it. continue reading on 4th July 2008 in Resilient Nation -
Where Trust is High, Crime and Corruption are Low
From the Pew Research Centre:
"Trust," political scientist Eric Uslaner has written, "is the chicken soup of social life." Over the last two decades, social scientists have repeatedly suggested that good things tend to happen in societies where people tend to trust each other -- they have stronger democracies, richer economies, better health, and they suffer less often from any number of social ills. continue reading on 30th June 2008 in Resilient Nation - The complexity of the civil protection model Good diagram showing the complexity of the civil protection model continue reading on 24th June 2008 in Resilient Nation
- The Pentagon's new map A map I should have put up ages ago. continue reading on 24th June 2008 in The Public Value of Security