Enriching learning experiences

By Billy Haworth. This article first appeared in the Winter 2016 edition of Fire Australia magazine.

As I begin to write this in an office at Tasmania Fire Service (TFS) headquarters in Hobart, reflecting on the week I’ve just had, I am feeling very grateful. For the last three years I have been undertaking PhD studies in the School of Geosciences at the University of Sydney. My research, in the context of community bushfire preparation, engagement and disaster risk reduction, investigates the application, value and implications of emerging technologies that enable increased public creation and exchange of geographic information. These technologies include social media, smartphones and online mapping platforms. I’ve had great support in my work from a number of people and organisations, but in particular the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC, and Peter Middleton and the Bushfire-Ready Neighbourhoods team at TFS.

Bushfire-Ready Neighbourhoods program

First, a little on Bushfire-Ready Neighbourhoods. It is a community engagement program within TFS that aims to build resilience and capacity in bushfire prevention, preparedness and response in Tasmanian communities at risk of bushfire. It does this through a sustainable community engagement approach. Both the CRC and the Bushfire-Ready Neighbourhoods program have been integral to my PhD project in many ways, and have also contributed to my professional development. Recently this support included an eight-day student placement with the Bushfire-Ready Neighbourhoods team as part of a CRC initiative to enrich higher degree research students’ experiences through exposure to the natural hazards and emergency management industry by immersion in a relevant organisation.

Placement activities

During the placement I participated inmany activities with the Bushfire-ReadyNeighbourhoods team and variousother parts of TFS—some directly linkedto my PhD research, but some not—togive me a broader understanding ofthe range of organisation activities andfunctions, and an appreciation of the context in which my research might be used in the future. Activities I was involved with included Bushfire-Ready Neighbourhoods team meetings, planning days to select communities for future engagement activities and a debrief of how the program functioned during the campaign fires of the summer just gone.

I also advised on mapping platforms for use in community engagement and reviewed content and language for a new web-based tool for bushfire survival planning. I met with active community members to talk about some of their community-led bushfire safety initiatives—including a web-based phone tree system, a local mapping project for the brigade and an alerts smartphone app proposal.

I was exposed to agency operations that, as a researcher relatively new to emergency management, I found incredibly valuable. I learned about community protection planning, response procedures and was introduced to state operations at TFS. I learned about firefighting aircraft, public and media information publishing, communications within a fire agency—computer systems, communication structure and emergency incident/alert procedures—and what happens if it all goes wrong! I also toured the Hobart Fire Brigade and spoke with firefighters about their roles and training, and the tasks they complete, not to mention all the fire appliances, their tools and functions, with interesting illustrative examples of applications!

Reflections on community engagement 

Reflecting on all these activities, three overarching observations come to mind. First, I was struck by the scale and diversity of what goes on within the organisation and all the specific details required to make things happen, from the fit-for-purpose tools on the fire trucks on a small scale, to the multifaceted roles within individual teams and departments, to the broader scale of the overall functions the agency performs. Second, I was impressed by the positive attitude to work and the productivity of all the people I met, but particularly the Bushfire-Ready Neighbourhoods team, especially in the face of various challenges.

For example, while the debrief workshop about community liaison following an extended fire campaign did aim to highlight challenges in the work each team member experienced through having to perform many tasks in high-stress situations outside their usual as opportunities for improvement.

By the end of the session there was an extensive list of practical suggestions the team will begin to action to enable them to perform better in their roles. And third, I saw very clear examples of some of the complexities in the organisation that must be navigated for effective delivery of emergency management. In particular, I observed differences between some of the community-focused engagement works and the more traditional top-down structure of the broader organisation.

Community engagement is a relatively new approach to emergency management in Australia. It appeared to me that reconciling how this approach fits within the legacy of emergency response service delivery in organisations is still a developing area, as opposed to being functionally developed. This may present challenges when working with community groups and is perhaps an area for improvement going forward. 

Overall the student placement was an immensely enriching and valuable experience. It proved a useful opportunity to increase my networking within the professional sector, impart some of my knowledge, gain insight into a fire service and the broader field of emergency management, learn about the high variety of important tasks and responsibilities, and appreciate the organisational structure and challenges emergency management professionals work with. This has important implications for the potential utilisation of my research findings in the sector, and is something I will continue to consider as my research progresses.

I feel grateful for this opportunity and the continued support of TFS and the CRC for my research and my personal and professional development. I feel grateful for the generous people I have had the privilege of meeting and working with and who have had nothing less than confidence in me. I feel grateful for all the experiences I’ve had in my PhD so far, especially those with the Bushfire-Ready Neighbourhoods team, as they have shaped my work to be something more meaningful, and shaped me to be a more robust researcher who is better skilled and more knowledgeable with a greater understanding and appreciation of the professional and societal context in which my research sits. I have learned a lot through my engagement with TFS and the emergency management sector, and I encourage other students and agencies to undertake placements, as it was a truly rewarding experience.

Thanks to Peter Middleton and the Bushfire-Ready Neighbourhoods team, Suzette Harrison, David Cleaver and Lesley King, the TFS for hosting me, my supervisor Eleanor Bruce and the CRC for making the placement happen.

Learn more about Billy’s research here.

“The CRC Student Placement Program has provided TFS with an invaluable opportunity to share our work, receive independent input from a student on how we operate and ultimately build on our action research approach.” Peter Middleton, TFS Community Development Coordinator