Research news and reports from Natural Hazards Research Australia’s (the Centre) leaders and researchers are featured in the January issue of the Australian Journal of Emergency Management (AJEM). AJEM is published by the Australian Institute of Disaster Resilience, profiling recent prominent natural hazards and emergency management research.
- A report, Measuring capability maturity for severe-to-catastrophic disasters, by the Centre’s CEO Andrew Gissing, summarises holistic capability research completed with the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC about the unique and inevitable challenges that severe-to-catastrophic disasters pose to Australia. The report presents the Capability Maturity Assessment Tool that can be used by emergency management agencies to identify and prioritise capability gaps across people, resources, governance, systems and processes.
- Prof Deborah Bunker, the Centre’s Chief Science Officer, reflects on the key highlights tensions and emerging solutions from the inaugural Natural Hazards Research Forum held in October 2022 in an article, Natural Hazards Research Forum: where the present meets the future.
- Communications Manager Nathan Maddock shares the winning concept of the Centre’s first Disaster Challenge – a concept pitched by Dr Kamarah Pooley (Fire and Rescue NSW) and Mark Owens (Country Fire Authority, Victoria) about using wi-fi to share essential disaster preparedness information with tourists and tourism workers.
- Dr Graham Dwyer, a Centre researcher in the Predictions in public project, shares an opinion piece, Natural hazards: the future of learning is already here. He highlights key recommendations for the emergency management sector that commonly arise in inquiries and reviews.
- For the Building resilience not ramparts: Reimagining emergency management in the era of climatic disasters article, Centre researcher Dr Briony Rogers writes about Monash University’s Fire to Flourish model of recovery and how it can be used to meet the needs of people with lived experience of bushfire-affected communities. Dr Rogers is also involved in the Centre’s current Understanding the resilience of lifelines for regional and remote communities project.
- Dr Kate Brady (Australian Red Cross), Prof Lisa Gibbs and Prof Louise Harms (University of Melbourne) ask the question ‘Who is worst off after a disaster?’, in their article that summarises research about which recovery mechanisms are helpful or unhelpful, based on experiences of people in Australia and New Zealand. Dr Brady and Prof Gibbs are involved in the Centre’s ongoing Community-led recovery project.
Researchers from the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC – the Centre’s predecessor – are also featured:
- A/Prof Benjamin Brooks and A/Prof Steven Curnin’s paper reports on Urban Search and Rescue decision-making research completed in the aftermath of the 2011 earthquake in Japan. Both Brooks and Curnin created a set of ‘train the trainer’ non-technical skills tools for emergency management practitioners as part of the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC’s Improving decision-making in complex multi-team environments project.
- Dr Christine Owen co-authored a report on the Tasmanian Disaster Risk Assessment 2022 reviews, including 12 workshops with 350 stakeholders across Tasmania to examine potential disaster risks and treatment options in Beyond a hazard-centric approach to risk assessment.
- Dr Greg Penney, one of the CRC’s associate students, co-authored a research paper called Quantifying the benefits of Australian emergency services training, which proposes an Emergency Services Training Financial Rationalisation Model for the funding of emergency services academies in Australia.
The January issue of AJEM also introduces AIDR’s new Executive Director Margaret Moreton and presents key outcomes from the Asia-Pacific Ministerial Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction, held in Brisbane in September 2022, as well as several notable reports and research summaries from across the sector.
Read the AJEM edition in full or download the PDF at https://knowledge.aidr.org.au/resources/ajem-january-2023/.