As 2021 comes to an end, the newly formed Natural Hazards Research Australia finishes its first six months of establishment. It has been a hectic period with many streams of activity happening, despite the restrictions imposed by COVID-19.
The Centre now has built upon the foundations of the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC by beginning to refresh its governance, hiring new key staff, and increasing its presence outside of Victoria. The Centre has almost completed its collation of national research priorities based on extensive feedback and has released its first round of projects. Funding for a postgraduate student program and for quick response research are now also open.
Information on all these initiatives is on our website.
A new, fully functioning website will be live in the coming months and will become a major repository of our work. We are currently working on a calendar of activities for 2022, including our first annual natural hazards conference. More on all that in the new year.
Why is all this important? As I write these words, the west of the country has experienced a run of extreme bushfires, the east has been hit by major rainfall and flood, the north has had heat and fire, the centre; heat and rain, the south; cold and rain. Meanwhile, tornados of unprecedented scale have ripped through the mid-United States, a volcano erupted in Indonesia, and drought is destroying crops in parts of Africa. And so on. None of these hazards are new, but with climate change increasing the frequency of extreme natural hazards, and demographic and urban changes increasing the vulnerability of many communities, we clearly need to better understand what we are dealing with.
The approach now is to move away from a belief that we can deal with these events through response and recovery alone; it is increasingly important to focus on how we mitigate the impacts initially, to acknowledge that these events are inevitable and potentially beyond our ability to control, and how we, as a community, become more resilient to them. The concept of resilience is important. Not only does it increase the ability of our communities to cope with natural hazard events, it increases the strength of our communities to all types of shocks and strains.
We need to better understand where, how and why we live where we do; what are the vulnerabilities of the lifeline services we rely on? What risks are we willing to live with, and which are we not? Many of these questions require a better understanding of the specific hazard, as well as understanding community attitudes and behaviours. This requires data from past and future events, which is something that, as a nation, we have been poor at collecting in a systemic way.
These challenges, and many more, were raised by the National Natural Disaster Arrangements Royal Commission and the various other inquiries following the 2019-20 fires, and through the National Disaster Risk Reduction Framework, are those that Natural Hazards Research Australia has been established to address. The new Centre, funded by its partners from the Commonwealth and state and territory governments, as well private and not-for-profit companies, has a ten-year life with a strong focus on community safety and reducing the impact of natural hazard events.
The challenge is large, but it will be better faced together, armed with knowledge gained through research. As a partner in the Centre, you are involved from the start. If you are interested in being involved, please get in touch through office@naturalhazards.com.au.
Thank you for your interest and engagement with the new Natural Hazards Research Australia. I wish you a very happy and safe Christmas and I look forward to working with you in the new year.