Doha                                                                                                                                                                                                  06 Nov. 2017

First major event Safety and Security Conference and the exhibition’ organized by the Security Committee of the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy in association with INTERPOL will begin tomorrow, Tuesday, 7th Nov. 2017 to be held at Saint Regis Hotel, Doha.

Representatives of 192  Interpol member countries, international organizations, high ranking officials  and participants from 65 countries will attend.

Jürgen Stock, Secretary General Interpol,  Hassan Al Thawadi, Secretary General, Supreme Committee for  Delivery and Legacy  will deliver the keynote speeches on the opening day. Capt. Falah Al Dosari, Senior Manager of Project Stadia, will introduce Project Stadia on the first day of the event.

Jürgen Stock said that the organizing of first major event on safety and security conference in cooperation between Interpol and Qatar is matter of pride as Qatar is organizing this conference in the context of its preparations for World Cup 2022. This conference is a best occasion to gather experts from various organizations and countries around the world for discussing the importance of strengthening creative cooperation in the field of organizing major events which is considered as a real challenge for the countries that will host major events in the future, whether they are sports or other fields.

Hassan Al Thawadi expressed his happiness in organizing the first major conference on safety and security in Doha in partnership with Interpol. He said that the relationship of the Supreme Committee for Delivery and Legacy with Interpol started since last 5 years from the general assembly of Interpol held in Rome. Ahead of us, we have only five years to host the first world cup in the Middle East and during this period, we will be signing cooperation agreements with Interpol in order to carry out our activities and the operation in a good way for ensuring  the organization of the unprecedented World Cup in 2022, he said.

In First Session, Andrew Glazzard, Director of National Security and Resilience Studies at the Royal United Services Institute for Defense and Security Studies (RUSI),  London, will speak on ‘Current security threat environment in the UK, the need for a step-change in approach when one considers preparation for major events’.

Filipo Dispenza, Director General of Public Security, Prefect of the Police of Cagliari, Italy, will present a paper on ‘European perspective on the major event security threat environment’. Filipo has 41 years of experience in the police force and has served as director of major Italian police offices across the country.

In addition to this, Dr. Jolene Jerard, Deputy Head of the International Centre for Political Violence and Terrorism Research, Nanyang Technological University of Singapore, will address on ‘Current and Emerging IS-centric threat landscape and its impact on major events’.

Major General Hazza bin Mubarak Al- Hajrey, Assistant Secretary General of the Cooperation Council for the Arab States of the Gulf for Security Affairs will address the audience on ‘GCC perspective on current security threat environment’.

Brig. Ibrahim Al Mohannadi, senior member of the National Counter Terrorism Committee and Head of Consultancy Unit, Security Committee for 2022 FIFA World Cup Qatar will present a paper titled ‘Focus on preparations Qatar is making to understand, build out and mitigate threat’ in the same session.

In the Second session, Helmut Spahn, Director of Security of FIFA, will speak on ‘Models of Risk Based Policing and Security for Major Events’.

Spahn is also a former Director General of the International Centre for Sport Security (ICSS) and current president of the German football club Kickers Offenbach. He has spent over 20 years as a high-ranking officer in the German police force. Spahn was formerly Head of Security for the 2006 FIFA World Cup Germany and Chief Security Officer for the German Football Association (Deutscher Fussball-Bund, DFB). He has been a UEFA Security Officer for the Champions League and Europa League as well as UEFA Euro 2012.

Geoff Smith, Commander Tasmanian Police, Australia will deliver a speech on ‘Australia’s new strategy for protecting crowded spaces from terrorism and its applicability to future major events’ in Second session. Commander Geoff is presently working as Senior Advisor on Counter-terrorism to  Tasmania police Force.

David Garnett, former commanding officer at National Joint Operational Command of South Africa and Current Head of Security of South African Reserve Bank will be another speaker on the subject “South Africa’s experience in delivering safety and security for 2010 FIFA World Cup”.

Brig. Ibrahim Saad Al-Sulaiti, Head of the Risk Management Unit, Security Committee for the 2022 FIFA World Cup Qatar will speak on  “Qatar 2022 Risk Management Approach”.

In the third session,  Dr Eng. Ahmed Al-Sulaiti, CEO, Qatar National Broadband Network will speak on  “Overview of transport, training and stadium construction preparations for the 2022 FIFA World Cup Qatar”,  will present a paper on “Network Security and Fiber Optic Infrastructure”.

Among other Speakers include Ian Williams, transport operations Senior Manager at the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy, Ashish Jian, Senior Vice President of Group Safety and Security and Airport Security, Qatar Airways, Thani Zarraa, Project Manager of Al Wakrah Stadium and Maj. Fahad Al Subai, Head of Training Unit at Security Committee of the Supreme Committee for Delivery & Legacy.

Mick O’Connell, Head of National Intelligence IOCCC, National Crime Agency of United Kingdom and Dr. Lou Marciani, Director of National Centre for Spectator Sports Safety and Security at University of Southern Mississippi, USA will be addressing last session on  ‘Project Stadia – Capability Development’ .

Ziad Khoury, former Head of Safety and Security of Euro 2016 will present a Case study from Euro 2016′ in the first session of the second day of the conference with the theme of subject ‘Responding to Evolving Threat Environment’. He will focus on planning and delivery of safety and security during a period of significant change in the threat environment.

Sergey Khrychikov, Head of Sports Conventions Unit at Council of Europe,  will deliver a speech on “Overview of the Council of Europe Convention on an integrated safety, security and service approach at football matches and other sports events and how it can assist in managing the evolving threat environment”.

Cüneyt Ünal, Head of Security Department-TNP of Turkey 1st Degree Chief Superintendent  will speak on the subject “Case study from the December 2016 attack on Besitkas Stadium in Istanbul, Turkey”.

Subprefecto Eduardo Cerna Lozano, of the Chilean Police will speak on  “Copa America 2015”.

“Mitigating security threats during major events” is the theme of the second session of the second day of the conference. The speakers include Federal Police Commissioner of Brazil, Valdecy Junior Urquiza, Superintendent David Berston of Australian Federal Police, Alexander Protasov, Head of Safety and Security of Russia 2018 LOC, and Jean-Pascal Mariani, Head of International Affairs at Counter Terrorism Unit in the Ministry of Interior of France.

The speakers will present papers on 1) “Case study from Brazil on the experiences of policing authorities regarding how good practices and opportunities for improvement identified from the 2014 FIFA World Cup were harnessed for the 2016 Olympics”, 2) “The Australian security planning approach focusing on lessons learned from recent major sporting events”, 3) “Russia’s Major Event Policing and Security Planning Approach for the 2018 FIFA World Cup” and 4) “Evolution of counter terrorism strategies for major events with case studies from France’s recent experiences with Euro 2016, Handball World Championships 2017 and preparations for Paris 2024” respectively.

The third session on the “Event Critical Infrastructure Resilience” will host the head of Q-Cert Qatar Eng. Dana Yousef Al-Abdulla on the subject “Cyber Emergency Response Team Preparations for the 2022 FIFA World Cup”. Other presenters of this session are senior representative of MITRE – Dr. Robert Coury and Dr. Fahad Al-Jaber, CEO of SOMOD (Qatar’s Infrastructure Development) on “Protecting national cyber infrastructure during major events” and “Event critical infrastructure resilience – The Qatar Approach” respectively.

The speakers of the fourth session on the theme “Decision Making in Response to Critical Incidents and Threats”  are Major General Arthur Denaro retd United Kingdom (UK) Armed Forces, and former UK Special Forces and Middle East Advisor to the UK Ministry of Defense speaking on “Military doctrine applied to major terrorist incidents”, Superintendent Luis Elias, Security Advisor to the Prime Minister of Portugal speaking on the subject “Portugese football policing and critical incident model” and Deputy Chief Kevin Catalina, Commanding Officer, Intelligence Operations and Analysis Section of  Intelligence Bureau in the New York Police Department on the topic “NYPD approach to planning for and responding to critical incidents during major events”.

In the last session of the conference on the theme “Technology in Support of Major Event Policing and Security’, the speakers are Chris de Silva, Vice President for Public Safety EMEA of NEC Europe, Jeff Muller, President / CEO of Muller Group International, Hong-eng Koh, Global Chief Public Safety Expert of Huawei and Lt. Col. Jassim Al Saeed.

They will present papers on the subjects titled

1) “Case study from the implementation of facial recognition technology at Estadio Atanasio Girardot Stadium and impact on reducing fan violence and improving the spectator experience”,

2) “Enhanced Security Through Integrated Technology For Major Events”,

3) “Harnessing communications technology to deliver major event policing and security with discussion of contemporary approaches and case studies from recent major events” and

4) Technical Security Systems in support of 2022.