Former Insurance Safety Executive Ryland Joins Wharton Risk Center

The Wharton Risk Management and Decision Processes Center has appointed Harvey Ryland as a senior research fellow. Ryland brings to the Wharton Risk Center 30 years of experience in the field of emergency management.

Ryland is the former president and chief executive officer of the Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS), a national, not-for-profit corporation dedicated to reducing injuries, deaths and property damage caused by natural disasters and day-to-day structural events. In this role, he led the organization in working with organizations in the

Prior to joining IBHS, Ryland was deputy director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). While there, he worked with James Lee Witt, then the director of FEMA, to develop a new strategy for emergency management in the United States, emphasizing loss reduction through property protection.

Previously, Ryland was executive director of the Central United States Earthquake Consortium (CUSEC), the project engineer for the development of the Incident Command System (ICS), the Uniform Fire Incident Reporting System (UFIRS), the Community Fire Protection Master Planning manuals, and numerous fire, law enforcement, and emergency management communications-dispatch systems.

Established in 1984, the Risk Management and Decision Processes Center at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia promotes corporate and public policies for low-probability events with potentially catastrophic consequences through the integration of risk assessment, and risk perception with risk management strategies. Natural disasters, technological hazards, and national and international security issues (e.g., terrorism risk insurance markets, protection of critical infrastructure, global security) are among the extreme events that are the focus of the Center’s research.

Source: Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania