CARIBBEAN disaster management expert Dr Barbara Carby has been named director of the Disaster Risk Reduction Centre (DRRC) of the University of the West Indies (UWI).

She succeeds retiring director Professor Trevor Jackson.

The DRRC, launched in July 2006, mobilises the UWI’s multidisciplinary training, research and technical expertise to enhance disaster management and mitigation in the Caribbean. It complements the work of other regional institutions, such as the Disaster Emergency Response Agency — the umbrella organisation comprising 16 national disaster agencies in the region.

The centre provides technical and advisory consultant services to mitigate the risks of disasters and mobilise human resource capacity within the university to provide assistance, both before and after disasters.

Carby, a former director general of Jamaica’s Office of Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Management, is credited with placing risk reduction on the national agenda and pioneering development of a national mitigation policy. She also expanded the hazard-mapping programme and fostered the use of hazard maps by parish councils in their development planning.

She served most recently as director of hazard management in the Cayman Islands, where she developed a national strategic framework for disaster risk reduction that will guide their national programmes.

Carby has worked on several disaster management programmes regionally, and has also served as a volunteer on the United Nations Scientific and Technical Committee for the Decade for National Disaster Reduction and as a member of the Advisory Board for the UN Central Emergency Response Fund.

As director of the DRRC, her focus will be on risk management, with an emphasis on risk reduction, which she regards as a critical component of any effort to achieve sustainable development for the region.