23-26 March 2009 Scoping Meeting Invited Speaker

Andrew Maskrey

Andrew is currently Chief of the Disaster Reduction Unit of the UNDP Bureau for Crisis Prevention and Recovery, based in Geneva, Switzerland. Between 1992 and 1999 he was founder and General Coordinator of the Network for Social Studies in Disaster Prevention in Latin America: LA RED. From 1987 to 1994 he was Director of the Intermediate Technology Development Group in Lima, Peru. Previously in 1983 he had founded the Center for Disaster Prevention and Research (PREDES) a Peruvian NGO and had worked in the National Institute of Urban Development (INADUR), also in Lima. As well, between 1996 and 1999 he was a member of the Scientific and Technical Committee of the International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction (IDNDR). Since 1982 he has worked extensively on a large variety of disaster risk management initiatives, particularly in Latin America but also in the Caribbean and Asia, including research, training, field application projects and consultancies.

He published Disaster Mitigation: A Community Based Approach and subsequently (1989). Los Desastres No Son Naturales (1993), Terremotos en el Tropico Humedo: Un Estudio Comparativo de los Desastres del Alto Mayo, Peru; Limon, Costa Rica and (1996) and Navegando entre Brumas: La Aplicacion de los Sistemas de Informacion Geografica al Analisis de Riesgos en America Latina (1998) as well as a large number of journal articles and papers. He trained professionally as an urban and regional planner in the University of Manchester, United Kingdom and holds postgraduate degrees in planning and in geographical information systems.