Dr Paul Barnes was a Senior Fellow and was previously Head of the Risk and Resilience Program at ASPI.

Paul joined ASPI as the inaugural Senior Analyst of the Disaster Resilience Program in September 2015. He has extensive experience as an academic and research leader on risk and crisis management issues. Prior to his role at ASPI he led the Infrastructure Research Program within the Centre for Emergency & Disaster Management (CEDM) at the Queensland University of Technology.

Formerly he served in several public sector and specialist management roles at both the State and Federal level. Within the emergency services arena, he was the inaugural Manager of the State Community Safety Unit of the Queensland Fire & Rescue Authority (QFRA) where he coordinated policy support on emergency response planning and oversaw the provision of legislative support for regulatory fire safety & fire prevention. During his period with the QFRA, he chaired the National Community Education Sub-Group of the Australasian Fire Authorities Council.

As Corporate Risk Manager of the Queensland Department of Primary Industries (QDPI), he represented the Department on the State Disaster Mitigation Committee, high-level cross-government working groups on critical infrastructure protection and biosecurity, as well as the whole-of-government Multi-agency Threat Assessment Team. At a Federal level he served as Director of Security Policy Development within the Defence Security Authority.

He has completed projects for the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC) and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) economies on gaps in counter terrorism capability and capacity planning, and the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet on national risk assessment frameworks.