Safety Management for Public Events

Safety is the first priority of event organisation. The recent major incidents happened in overseas live events such as the terror attack in Manchester Arena, concert fire in Oakland, and the Marathon bombing in Boston, etc, served as a harsh reminder of the ever-present threat during any live event. The need of continuous assessment of risks and needs, as well as developing and implementing up-to-date emergency plans are essential for an effective response to all kinds of emergencies including man-made and natural disasters. The work of event safety does not rely only on the event organisers and emergency responders but also the general public, the Government and industry stakeholders.

The Hong Kong Jockey Club Disaster Preparedness and Response Institute (HKJCDPRI), with support of the Asia World Expo, conducted an Event Safety Seminar. The seminar was designed to provide practical insights for event organisers, emergency preparedness and response organisations, and all those who provide support to live events industry. Bringing together a group of international and local experts, participants learnt about the latest venue security planning strategies, protocols and technologies, as well as experts' insights on balancing security, operational efficiency and public image. 

The HKJCDPRI would like to share with you some highlights of the seminar in webcasts.

Mr Tim Roberts started off with a brainstorm of what can go wrong in events, and listed out some of the more prominent incidents that happened in events recently. The audience will then learn about the concepts of doing an effective and suitable risk assessment in order to apply the best preventive measures.  Mr Roberts highlighted that ‘risks’ do not only come in the form of physical harm and injury, but are also social, cultural, reputational or media, environmental, or even legal, hence the importance of risk mapping. Different target audiences exhibits different behavior, hence when doing risk assessment, audience demographics have to be accounted for, due to differences in communication channels. There is no one-size-fits-all safety plan, thus emergency preparedness plans must be able to adapt to any incident.

Target audience will be event organisers, emergency preparedness and response organisations, security services organiastions, and all those who will conduct live events including NGOs, schools, etc.