Eelco Dykstra

Dr. Eelco H. Dykstra is the founder and chairman of DIEM and the International Katrina Project. Dr. Eelco Dykstra has twenty-five years of international emergency management experience in a wide variety of settings. He combines research and theoretical policy with extensive field experience in the USA, Turkey, Bosnia, East Africa, Indonesia, and the Middle East.

After having witnessed the various European, US, African and Asian approaches to emergency management systems and their stakeholders, he recently developed an innovative, worldwide initiative called “The International Katrina Project” (IKP).

An acclaimed presenter and motivator, also for interdisciplinary, cross-cultural and inter-sector audiences, he provides ‘infotainment’ and thrills audiences with his reality-fiction stories that are based on the ‘lessons learned’ he and his colleagues picked up from their world-wide experiences, travel and project assignments.

A rare speaker and moderator able not only to cover issues from the ‘board-room’ to the ‘engine-room’ but one who is equally at ease in front of audiences from government entities, private sector companies, knowledge brokers, the media, and the population at large.

After five years as a visiting research professor of International Emergency Management at the George Washington University in Washington D.C., he is currently back in Europe to take audiences through startling “What if…?” scenario’s and help them draw their own conclusions and recommendations. Eelco is the author of two books dealing with a major storm and flood disaster affecting 12 European countries.