PhDs completed by students

Three more more CRC supported researchers have completed their PhDs, with their research to inform the emergency management sector.

Dr Fiona Jennings' PhD at the RMIT University explored the impact of the 2013 Forcett bushfires in Tasmania on local residents. Her thesis, Navigating uncertainty: a qualitative study of resident involvement in the 2013 Forcett Tasmania bushfire disaster, is a grounded theory analysis of resident involvement in the bushfire, which threatened life and left homes, livelihood and landscape destroyed or damaged. Despite this there appeared to be a level of social structure and processes evident during the bushfire. Many residents carried out a range of actions and activities before, during and after the bushfire. It appeared that residents had a way of doing things and these actions were significant. In the post fire phase, many of these local processes appeared to be overlooked by the well-intentioned external help or overwhelmed by the visitor-related goodwill. The analysis presented in Fiona's thesis focuses on the local social processes. The main question opening the inquiry was – what is community-led recovery in the context of a bushfire hazard and disaster? The qualitative research design involved in-depth interviews, to develop an explanatory account of the phenomenon of interest based on the analysis of people's experience and perspectives. 

Titled Improving adaptation planning for future sea level rise and coastal flooding, Dr Tim Ramm’s PhD thesis, accepted by the University of Tasmania, examines the effects of a rising sea level. Sea level rise has the potential to exacerbate coastal flooding around the world, causing more frequent extreme sea levels, nuisance flooding and permanent inundation. This thesis develops an interdisciplinary approach to advance the planning of long-term adaptation pathways in the context of coastal flood risk management. Utilising three case studies in south east Australia, it combines the strengths of robust decision making and dynamic adaptive policy pathways – both prominent tools to support decision-making under conditions of uncertainty – together with solicited values-based information to make three novel advances towards flexible adaptation pathways planning. The scenario discovery process uses an existing cluster finding algorithm to identify future conditions where adaptation policies no longer keep flood risk at tolerable levels. Combining robust decision making and dynamic adaptive policy pathways is a novel approach in coastal flood risk management and scenario discovery provides greater visibility on the physical factors driving adaptation tipping points.

Dr Tetsuya Okada completed his thesis with Macquarie University in 2017. Acknowledging local sociality in disaster recovery: a longitudinal, qualitative study looks at the formal recovery, reconstruction and risk reduction efforts put in place in response to major disaster events. The efforts are designed to redevelop infrastructure and services for, and improve the longer-term safety of, the affected populations. However, these efforts often rely on top-down approaches that neglect the impact on and the presence of local people’s everyday lives in and with their communities (local sociality). Dr Okada explores these issues in four case studies: the towns of St George and Grantham, in Queensland, Australia, both of which were severely impacted by flooding events between 2010 and 2012, and the Japanese towns of Koizumi and Namie, which sustained devastating damage from the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami and in the case of Namie, contamination from the Fukushima nuclear reactor in 2011. His study identifies a critical coherence in the human, social and political issues and challenges across all study areas, despite differences in the country, physical attributes of the hazards, types of damage and responses.