AFAC19 research front and centre in Journal

With a focus on crisis management and disaster resilience, the October edition of the Australian Journal of Emergency Management features research from the CRC’s Research Forum, as well research from the main AFAC19 powered by INTERSCHUTZ program.

A/Prof Benjamin Brooks, Dr Steve Curnin, A/Prof Christine Owen and Jason Bolderman from the Improving decision-making in complex multi-team environments project have investigated the concept of creative thinking within emergency services, critical infrastructure sector and not-for-profit organisations. Their paper, New human capabilities in emergency and crisis management: from non-technical skills to creativity, provides an overview of creative decision-making and what it means for the future leaders of the emergency management sector.

The research team from the Tools supporting fire management in northern Australia project have presented a case study into the costs of bushfires in the Northern Territory. Dr Kamaljit Sangha, Jay Evans, Dr Andrew Edwards and Prof Jeremy Russell-Smith’s paper Measuring environmental losses from natural disasters applies methods of global and national costing and proposes an integrated framework that incorporates marketable and non-marketable losses including those to the environment to be applied to communities in the Northern Territory.

The project Flood risk communication is looking at the ways people respond to flood warnings. Behaviour around floodwater: challenges for floodwater safety and risk communication by Dr Mel Taylor, Dr Matalena Tofa, Dr Katherine Haynes, Joshua McLaren, Peter Readman, Diana Ferguson, Sascha Rundle and Danny Rose detail challenges that emergency services are facing when issuing warnings and highlights some of the approaches being taken to help address these challenges.

Mitchell Scovell, Dr Connor McShane, Dr Daniel Smith and Dr Anne Swinbourne explore why some people choose to install structural upgrades to their homes in North Queensland and why some choose not. Personalising the message: promoting cyclone protection in North Queensland draws on research from Mitchell’s PhD research and identifies the psychological factors that promote mitigation behaviour for structures and presents a method of segmenting groups based on these psychological factors.

Recently graduated CRC PhD student Dr Fiona Jennings from RMIT University examines how people are directly affected by a catastrophic event and how they respond. Her research paper, Navigating uncertainty: community experiences of bushfire, takes a look at the 2013 Forcett bushfire and uses this event as a benchmark to contrast her research findings. This research was not presented at AFAC19.

You can access the entire edition for free. If you would prefer to receive the email alert for the online edition so that you don’t miss out, subscribe to email alerts.

The Australian Journal of Emergency Management is published by the Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience in partnership with the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC.