Portsmouth Business School

Profile

Professor Edward Borodzicz

Edward was appointed Professor of Risk and Crisis Management at Portsmouth University in January 2005.  His interests include: risk, crisis and security management, risk and human behaviour, disaster response, socio-technical systems failure, corporate risk and business continuity, security and resilience, terrorism, business continuity management and ethnographic research and simulations and games for training.  Edward has worked extensively over the past 17 years with the emergency services, local and central government agencies and large Businesses and Universities throughout the world. 

Edward’s PhD thesis was based on simulation training for complex inter-organisational response to major crises among the UK emergency services.  Over the last 20 years his research has developed to cover commercial and public service organisations with a particular interest in how small groups of key decision makers can make a strategic difference to resilience during crisis events.  Edward has developed and is well known in the risk and resilience community for his numerous simulation and role play exercises designed to train and evaluate key personnel for these roles in the UK and abroad.

Edward’s teaching is predominantly post graduate for masters/ MBA and the Portsmouth DBA.  He also has a string of successful completions at doctorate level and currently has a number of PhDs and DBA students at PBS.

Edward publishes in a wide range of key refereed journals, and authored a book entitled ‘Risk, Crisis and Security Management’ (published by John Wiley and Sons 2005).  Edward appears frequently in the media, on BBC television and Radio and also a variety of independent broadcasting networks and major daily journals.  Most recently Edward Appeared in the BBC World Service programme ‘World Debate’ which goes out to over 90 million viewers.

More recently Edward developed an exercise, ‘ARGUS’, used extensively by the British security services to develop resilience among the business community in crowded and complex environments.  Of key interest here is the way allowing local populations to find their own innovative solutions has contributed to better resilience and preparedness. 

Another area of research Edward is involved with is in looking at risk and resilience in the natural environment.  Edward has been involved in two large EU funded research projects, ‘PRONE’ and ‘JAKFISH’ which looks at how risk perception among stakeholders involved in the fishing industry may vary and he has developed a dynamic role play simulation to help stakeholders understand each others perception and resolve conflicts.  

Edward has most recently been involved in the production of a new PAS 200 for the British Standards Institute on Crisis Management, this was published in September 2011 and represents the first officially government sponsored standard for this in the world.  This work is highly innovative in suggesting that highly formalised and structured processes may actually detract from a successful outcome.  Edward has subsequently been invited to join another BSi standards panel due to report in 2013.

Some recent key publications include:

Recent Publications

Official Reports

BSi/Cabinet Office   PAS 200: 2011 Crisis Management – Guidance and Good Practice. BSi London.