Barbara Carby is the Director of the Disaster Risk Reduction Centre, University of the West Indies. She is a disaster risk management professional with over 20 years national, regional and international experience in disaster risk reduction, pre and post disaster planning and interventions. Barbara’s core competencies are all-hazards planning, policy development, hazard management programme development and evaluation, building awareness for the importance of risk reduction from community through national to international level. Her pioneering work includes development of the first national hazard mitigation policy for Jamaica, national drought management plan, national strategic framework for disaster risk reduction, and use of science-based scenarios for disaster risk management planning. At the regional level she has developed national multi-hazard multi-phase plans including medium to long term risk reduction strategies. She was co-principal investigator for the development of the Caribbean Risk Atlas which contains risk maps on flood and seismic risk for Jamaica and Barbados.

Her voluntary contribution to public life includes chairing the Education Sector Sub Committee of the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA) and the Latin America and Caribbean Disaster Risk Reduction Committee of the International Council for Science (ICSU).

Her research interests include interdisciplinary disaster risk reduction research and integration of knowledge bases. She holds a PhD in Geochemistry from the University of the West Indies.