Board of Directors

Meet the members of TIEMS Board of Directors
  1. K. Harald Drager, TIEMS President (Norway)
  2. Josef Leitmann, Vice President (USA)
  3. Jaroslav Pejcoch, Secretary/ChairTIEMS Advisory Board (Czech Republic)
  4. Kyle King, Treasurer (USA)
  5. Yosuke Okita, Director for Membership and Chapters (Japan)
  6. Gilles Dusserre, Director for TIEMS RTD Activities (France)
  7. Jean-Paul Monet, Regional Director Europe (France)
  8. Cherdsak Virapat, Regional Director Asia (Thailand)
  9. Thomas V. Robertson, Regional Director North America (USA)
  10. Brian Holecek, Regional Director Australia, New Zealand & Oceania (Australia)
  11. Roman Tandlich, Regional Director Africa (South Africa)
  12. Regional Director for Latin America and Caribbean (Vacant)

Terms of Reference (TOR) for TIEMS Board Members, Officers and Secretariat.

To Top

K. Harald Drager 2013
K. Harald Drager is TIEMS President.
 
He is one of the founders of TIEMS. Since 2002 he is the President of TIEMS and has contributed significantly to the development of the society.
 
He is the Managing Director of QUASAR Invest AS in Norway, a consultancy in global safety, emergency and disaster management. He has a Master’s degree in control engineering from the Norwegian Technical University in 1967 and a Master’s degree from Purdue University in USA in industrial engineering in 1973. His specializations are international organizational development, emergency, disaster and risk management, and project management. He has done consultancy work for numerous clients internationally, amongst others the World Bank/International Finance Corporation, NATO and the European Commission. He has been project manager of several international research and development projects for methods and software development in risk, emergency and disaster management. He was employed by Det norske Veritasin 1967 and a member of the Board of Directors of the company for 5 years until he left the company in 1983 and founded his own consultancy. He took the initiative to establish TIEMS, and was the International Vice President of TIEMS since its inauguration in 1994 until 2002, when he took over as TIEMS President. He has published numerous papers internationally on emergency, risk and disaster management.
 
He was TIEMS representative in the EU funded NARTUS project with the responsibility for consensus building and establishing the PSC Europe Forum, an all stakeholder forum for public safety communication. PSC Europe Forum is a self governed organization after it was launched at the end of the NARTUS project in 2009, and arranges two assembly conferences each year and is a leading global advocate for standardization and research initiatives in public safety communication. He was/is a member of the advisory board/user boards of several EU projects. He was a European Commission appointed evaluator for the EU Security Calls for FP7 2013, and the Horizon 2020 Call for Secure Societies in 2014. He wasTIEMS Project leader in the following EU Ptojects; ASSET, HERACLES, IMPETUS, FIRELOGUE and FIRE - RES.
 
He was given the 2011 Certificate of Appreciation by IAEM (International Association of Emergency Managers), with the following words of appreciation, “It is rare that IAEM recognizes someone who is not a member of IAEM; but Mr. Drager, through his leadership of our partner organization, TIEMS, has served our profession with distinct thinking globally and acting locally to create a society of academics within our profession. This has been a commitment of over a decade of dedicated service by a committed individual that IAEM recognizes as a service to our profession”.
 
He was appointed Professor Chair for 4 years in 2014 at King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. He was also appointed Visiting Professor at North Western University in Xian in China in 2016 for 2 years.
 
Josef LeitmannJosef Leitmann is TIEMS Acting Vice President.
 
Dr. Joe Leitmann is an American and Austrian citizen.  He is an international resilience expert who consults for the United Nations and the World Bank.  Joe is also the Executive Director of the University of California Disaster Resilience Expert.  He worked for 35 years with the World Bank, most recently as Lead Disaster Risk Management Specialist with the Global Facility for Disaster Risk Reduction and Recovery. 
 
Dr. Leitmann worked in over forty developing countries in the areas of clean energy, natural resource management, urban development, post-disaster recovery, climate change, and resilience.  Accomplishments included raising and managing over US$1 billion for recovery from the tsunami in Indonesia and the earthquake in Haiti. 
 
Joe is Vice President of the US chapter of TIEMS and the author of numerous publications including Sustaining Cities (a McGraw-Hill textbook on urban environmental management).  He speaks, French, Portuguese, Bahasa Indonesia, Spanish, Turkish, Maori, and is learning Korean.
 
Jaroslav_PejcochJaroslav Pejcoch is TIEMS Secretary and Chair of TIEMS Advisory Board.
 
He is the President and co-founder of T-SOFT Company (Crisis management, Interoperability, Security ). Before T-SOFT he worked at the Electronic Research institute Tesla VÚST as Director of IT Division.

He is the founding member of the AFCEA Czech Chapter and member of the Board of Directors and is member of the Czech National Committee of ISDR, and member of the Presidium of the Czech Association of Crisis Managers.

From 1975 he is teaching at Czech Technical University – Faculty of electronic.

His publication activities are in areas of computer graphics, computer user interfaces, information and communication technologies, information logistic and systems for protection of citizens and environment, interoperability of systems, crisis management, critical infrastructure protection.

He is married, have 4 children and is living in Prague and Telc .His hobbies are music (active piano player), mountaineering and photography.

To Top

Kyle King is TIEMS Treasurer.Kyle King

Kyle is Founder and Managing Director of Capacity Building International (CBI). Kyle has spent 28 years in the emergency services and international security field with 8 of those years being with NATO.

He is Certified in the US Department of Defense as a Chief Fire Officer, and he helped design and build the first international DoD Fire and Emergency Services Certification Program for international students, and he also served as the first Civil Emergency Advisor to support NATO Operations.

Among his other accomplishments are that he worked to contribute to the development of NATO’s Security Force Assistance program and wrote NATO’s capacity building education and training program for Kosovo. Locations where he has worked in missions includes Bosnia, Afghanistan, Kosovo, and Ukraine.

Kyle holds a Masters in Diplomacy and Terrorism Studies as BS/BA in Public Administration as well as numerous certifications from US Department of Defense, NATO, and other institutions. Currently Kyle is focused on supporting the Institute for Security Governance and international programs as well as being seconded to the Organization for Security Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

He is TIEMS partner in the Webinar series of International models in emergency management.

To Top

Yosuke Okita is TIEMS Director Membership and Chapters. Yosuke Okita update

Dr. Okita has significant experience working in international disaster and emergency management, including some international emergency missions as a member of the Japan Disaster Relief (JDR) team, which is deployed by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), and the United Nations Disaster Assessment and Coordination (UNDAC) team.

As a JDR team member, he was deployed to the Algeria Earthquake (2003; rescue team), the Indonesia Tsunami (2004; medical team), the Pakistan Earthquake (2005; medical team), and the Christchurch Earthquake (2011; rescue team). As a UNDAC member, he participated in the missions for the Great East Japan Earthquake (2011), Typhoon Haiyan in the Philippines (2013) and the Nepal Earthquake (2015). In the Nepal response, he was one of the first-arriving international assistance team members, and he served as the RDC (Reception Departure Centre) Manager, which was established at the Kathmandu airport.

He received LL.B. from Kyoto University, M.A. in International Relations/Master of Diplomacy from The Australian National University, and PhD in Media and Governance from Keio University in Japan. His PhD thesis is titled “Effects of the classification system in international search and rescue”. He published many academic articles on international urban search and rescue, disaster prevention and recovery, and disaster diplomacy in English and Japanese.

To Top

Gilles Duserre is TIEMS Director for Research and Developement Activities.Gilles Dusserre

Gilles DUSSERRE is full professor at IMT Mines Ales, head of Master of Science Disaster Managament and Environmental Impact (DAMAGE). He holds a Doctorate of Pharmacy (1987-1993), a Master degree "Chemistry of the Environment and Health - University of Marseille" (1995).

He conducted many researches in the field of risk management mainly related to risk analysis, evaluation of the consequences of technological disasters (fire, explosion and dispersion of toxic gases) and natural disasters (forest fires and floods), the efficiency of mitigation means (e.g. use of water curtains) and crisis management. He managed various studies within the framework of national, European and international projects, in partnership with industry, academia and major research organizations. He participated on various projects dedicated to resilience of critical infrastructures.

He was expert in several international missions such as for the French Ministry of the Interior in Malaysia in 1998 relative to the exposure of the population to the forest fire smokes and in South Africa in 2001 in relation to Crisis management.

He’s author and co author of about 50 international publications.

To Top

Jean-Paul Monet is TIEMS Regional Director for Europe.jean-paul Monet
 
Lieutenant-colonel Jean-Paul Monet is a senior fire officer employed by Bouches-du-Rhône fire brigade, France (www.sdis13.fr). Head of a fire district gathering 13 stations, 1000 firemen (200 full time; 800 part time), and defending 250.000 inhabitants, this assistant chief officer is departmental and regional CBRNe advisor of French civil protection.
Detaining a master degree of pharmacy, this 52 years old officer has been working in industrial hazard risk assessment, CBRNe and IT emergency planning fields for 28 years. He has been responsible for many incident commands, from forest fires to industrial accidents, including mass medical emergencies.
He served four years in this school, and nowadays he’s still associate teacher of French national fire officers’ academy since 1990.
After being EU expert evaluator for FP7 security calls from 2008 to 2011, he took part to several FP7 group as end user and CBRNe expert: Decotesc1, Acrimas, Eden, Cato, Darius, Archimedes… He’s been involved in robotic tools innovation development groups for many years.
 
His publications and conferences in the pre-cited domains are witnessing of his willingness to implement efficiently R&D and innovation for civil protection stakeholders, and to share security knowledge worldwide.

Cherdsak Virapat is TIEMS Regional Director for Asia
Cherdsak Virapat

Cherdsak Virapat has been working in the field of end-to-end multi-hazard early warning and mitigation systems for 20 years now. He had been appointed Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of four organizations during the last 16 years (2008-2024). These are Executive Director, International Ocean Institute Headquarters (IOI HQ) in Malta (2008-2014); Director General, Network of Aquaculture Centres in Asia-Pacific (NACA), Inter-Governmental Organization, Bangkok, Thailand (2014-2019); Executive Director, International Institute for Trade and Development (Public Organization), Ministry of Commerce, Royal Thai Government, Bangkok, Thailand (Regional Institute) established in collaboration with the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) (2019-2020); Director General, Centre on Integrated Rural Development for Asia and the Pacific (CIRDAP), Inter-Governmental Organization, Dhaka, Bangladesh (2020–2024). He has been associated as a resource person of the International Emergency Management Society (TIEMS) since 2011.

It is highly important to note that TIEMS aims to prepare an inclusive resilient society through building capacity of the individual and community living at high-risk areas for better coping with disasters and achieving sustainable development. Its vision and mission strongly inspire me to work with the organization to promote knowledge-based and adaptive management for community learning, preparedness and response which will save their lives and property as well as to build up their capacities to better cope with impacts of climate change and natural disasters.

To Top

Thomas V. Robertson is TIEMS Regional Director for North America. Tom picture update 2019

He directs North America operations of TIEMS, where he founded the TIEMS USA local chapter. He participated for TIEMS in the European Union Programs ASSET, which developed improved, participatory approaches to pandemic response, and HERACLES, which developed systems and processes to protect cultural heritage sites from the effects of climate change. He has published and presented numerous papers on risk communication during emergencies, disaster risk reduction, virtual simulation in emergency management, pandemic response, climate change resilience, AI implications for emergency management, and applications of advanced technologies in the US, France, Italy, China, Japan, Belgium, Greece, Ukraine, Saudi Arabia, the Philippines, Northern Cyprus, and Korea. He has been visiting faculty at Écoles des Mines d’Ales Master’s program in Disaster Management and Environmental Impact Studies, and he currently serves as an Expert in Small and Medium Enterprises for the European Innovation Council. He is a Senior Life Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers.

He is Founder and Principal at Thinking Teams, an international consultancy specializing in harmonizing human and machine intelligence. As a researcher/engineer, he has developed innovations in biological system modeling, pattern recognition, and computer vision, and he is fluent in current deep learning technologies. His practical organizational experience includes leading research labs and aerospace organizations as Chief Scientist, Program Manager, and VP/General Manager. He has also consulted to organizations both inside and outside the technical sector, using his Organizational Alignment Model.

He earned BS, MS, and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University, where he did research in bioengineering, communications, artificial intelligence, and remote sensing. He was Member of the Technical Staff at Bell Laboratories, Director of the Advanced Information Sciences Division at The Analytical Sciences Corporation, Director of Engineering and Chief Scientist of Lockheed Martin Advanced Simulation Center, and Vice President and General Manager of Atlantic Aerospace Electronics Corporation. In these positions he performed and managed research and development in telecommunications, signal and image processing, advanced computing, artificial intelligence, computer graphics, and simulation.

Brian Holecek is TIEMS Regional Director for Australia, New Zealand and OceaniaBrian Holecek ver2

Brian Holecek Experience:

  • Experience covers rural wildfire and structural firefighting, incident and risk management, and firefighting culture.
  • Forty-five (45) years in the volunteer fire sector, state incident management roles and as staff Officer in the South Australian Country Fire Service seven years (7) in doctrine.
  • Thirty-five (35) years with the South Australian County Fire Service and just short of 10 years with the NSW Volunteer Bushfire Brigades renamed in 1997 to NSW Rural Fire Service.
  • Response governance for first responders related to incidents: EUCPM (European Union Civil Protection Mechanism), interoperability through the identification and development of Standard Operational Procedures (SOP), situational awareness, international trainings on command and control, technical ground practices.
  • Trustworthy, smart, and efficient real-time communication to citizens during incidents.
  • Major incident, Disaster: process/behaviour drivers, emergency, and fire management, landscape and economy, governance, society, communication, and risk awareness.
  • Partnership brokerage: inclusive governance systems for incident management, investments for modern technologies and social innovations, EU legal framework for governance system, partnerships between industries and data providers.
  • Dissemination and communication channels, and tools: awareness campaigns to the large public in future incident prone regions, information-based decision making in incident management, pan-European approach to integrated fire management, policy processes.
  • EU Project management including taking part in Living Labs and operational aspects of Data Management

To Top

Roman Tandlich is TIEMS Regional Director for Africa.Roman Tandlich update

Roman Tandlich, has been working in the field of emergency and disaater management since 2011. With background in biotechnology, Dr. Tandlich got involved in the development of low-cost and decentralised sanitation technologies. During the rollout of one such technology, policy and technical skills shortages at local government level. This resulted in the shift of focus of Dr. Tandlich's research towards disaster management approaches towards shift action to address water, sanitation and hygiene challenges in developing countries. This has led to the development of new teaching and research tools to deal with public health, disaster risk reduction and Development. 

Roman is originally from Slovakia where he completed his education up to Masters level. This occurred in 1998 and his background was originally in Biotechnology. He then continued on to complete his PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences at North Dakota State University in Fargo, USA. After two postdoctoral fellowships, Roman joined the Faculty of Pharmacy at Rhodes University in South Africa in 2008. He has been with the same department since then and has recently been promoted there to the rank of Associate Professor. He has expertise in public health, water and sanitation and Disaster ethics

To Top

Login