Jean-Luc Thouvenel is Middle East and North Africa Sales & Marketing Director for Thales Security activities since November 2005. Thales Security activities focus on systems for the protection of critical infrastructures, such as ports/airports, energy & sensitive sites. It also addresses the market of homeland security and ID Solutions systems.

Before joining Thales Security activities, Mr Thouvenel has been Corporate Director for Thales in United Arab Emirates from November 2001 to 2005.

Also experienced in Military Systems, Mr Thouvenel served for Thales Communications in other Middle East countries where he enjoyed driving Electronic Warfare and Communications Projects.

Mr Thouvenel got a MBA in Business from the French School E.M. Lyon (France) and is 51 years old. He is a member of the French Foreign Trade Association.

From emergency situation to crisis management

The world History over the last decades shows the increasing frequency of major threats and disasters of all sorts - natural, biological, social, technological, manmade, chemical or environmental incidents - affecting whole countries. Also, cyber attacks on critical information systems can cause serious damages to States. Facing physical or logic threats and their devastating consequences raises the question of States’ readiness and ability to respond and effectively deal with large disasters and mass casualties.

Security agencies need to master their response and strategy adaptability in case of danger. They need to be able to monitor all events in real time, deal with constant interconnection of threats and risks and evolve in an instable environment.

Major objectives are to ensure citizens safety & security, cities’ business processes continuity and critical assets protection, thus achieving States and businesses resilience. Complete crisis management model needs to be defined in order to provide rules, strategies and responses to cope with unpredictable situations that ease emergency situations’ migration into crisis operations.

Main goals are to increase anticipation and prevention monitoring, establish common technological layers through all relevant crisis effectors, increase systems, networks and organizations resilience, share and secure emergency communications networks and provide real time synthesis using new environmental supervision and hypervision tools.