How can communities and agencies weather the storm?

This article was first featured in the Summer 2014-2015 edition of Fire Australia magazine. By Nathan Maddock.

As emergency management becomes increasingly all-hazard focused, community warnings and coordination between agencies becomes more vital. New research by the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC will assist partner agencies across Australia and New Zealand communicate more effectively and bounce back from natural disasters.

Why do people in vehicles get stuck in raging floodwaters despite repeated ‘if it’s flooded, forget it’ warnings from emergency services and media? Why do some people stay and some people go when a bushfire is bearing down on their home?

CRC researchers at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT) are building on previous community warning research for bushfire and expanding it into other hazards. A new project, Connecting communities and resilience: a multihazard study of preparedness, response and recovery communications, is set to find out how people assess the risks of an unfolding natural disaster and use that to decide on their response to events like cyclones and bushfires.

Their aim is to fine-tune the design of emergency warnings and updates to ensure people understand the instructions and act appropriately to minimise injury and loss of life, and improve the recovery phase of natural disasters.

Professor Vivienne Tippett from QUT is leading the project, and leading the cluster of research projects on communications and warnings in the CRC. The cluster encompasses five projects on risk communication.

“The aim of the Connecting communities and resilience project is to partner with end user agencies to design effective communication that motivates people to act to protect their lives and others during and immediately after a natural disaster,” Professor Tippett said.

“Because people receive warnings from each other, news, social media and the emergency services, there can be challenges about who to trust and how to behave as the natural disaster unfolds around them.

“We want to examine how people engage with emergency warnings and how psychology and the law can influence that process to guide the development of innovative digital and communication campaigns that ultimately protect lives,” Professor Tippett explained.

Bouncing back from disasters

QUT’s Dr Paul Barnes is co-research leader of the Emergency management capability cluster, in which he is leading a project investigating the capabilities agencies need to invest in now in order to work better individually and together in the future.

“Multiple agencies must coordinate and work together to enhance response[s] and to help people and communities recover quickly from the effects of natural disasters,” Dr Barnes said.

“In Queensland in 2010 and 2011, for example, when 80% of the state was disaster-declared after a series of floods and cyclones, bridges were down, roads were impassable, food wasn’t getting through, and people couldn’t get to work.

“We need to ensure the best and most efficient coordination possible for applying the resources and operations of agencies such as [departments of] housing and families, members of the insurance industry, fire and emergency management, and health at the local, regional and statewide [levels] in real-time.

“This study will focus on how best we might integrate these agencies’ response and recovery efforts so communities can be back on their feet as soon as possible.

“And, because natural hazards are more frequent and severe than ever before, we may well have to do more with less and look at investment and planning for disaster scenarios we have not faced yet by considering what conditions will be like in five and ten years to come and detail the coordinated capability needed to deal with them,” explained Dr Barnes.