The Natural Hazards Research Australia Board and staff were in Perth recently to hold 2023’s first Board Stakeholder Forum.
Co-hosted by the Department of Fire and Emergency Services, the forum on 7 February brought together a room full of representatives from emergency service agencies, various research institutions, all three levels of government, the private sector and not-for-profits to provide our valued stakeholders in Western Australia with direct engagement with the Board and Centre staff.
Bringing our Western Australian stakeholders together allowed us to share the latest updates on the ongoing development of our research program, as well as opportunities for these stakeholders to be involved in further scoping and benefiting from the Centre’s research. In addition, there was a vibrant Q&A session between the Board and attendees, with a variety of thought-provoking topics being raised, including how the Centre can:
- act as a catalyst to drive better linkages across sectors, nationally and internationally through research
- provide a link between what is occurring in the national strategic landscape regarding natural hazards resilience and disaster risk reduction in a state-based context
- best support the use of knowledge, data and insights from research into usable tools for different audiences.
This is the fourth Board Stakeholder Forum we have conducted over the past nine months after visiting stakeholders in South Australia, Tasmania and Queensland in 2022. The next forum will be held in the ACT in May. We plan to make our way around the rest of the country with these forums, in addition to maintaining regular contact and engagement with all of the Centre’s stakeholders across the various sectors through other means. It is incredibly important to us that we listen to the needs our stakeholders raise and use these insights to better inform how we invest in, develop and deliver research with end-users and researchers, with the ultimate goal of making communities as resilient as possible to future shocks and stressors cause by natural hazards.