CRC to launch industry-first disaster resilience website

Research is tracking disaster resilience around the country to help improve preparedness for natural hazards right around Australia.

The Australian Disaster Resilience Index is an industry-first assessment of the state of disaster resilience across Australia, and provides a clear pathway for businesses, governments and community organisations to improve their decision making about planning, development, policy, engagement and risk assessment.

It will be launched via webinar on 29 July 2020 at 11am AEST (10.30 ACST, 9am AWST) and you can register below.

Developed in collaboration with the University of New England, the Index takes the form of a website, built alongside key emergency service partners.

At the launch, lead researcher Dr Melissa Parsons (UNE) will show attendees how to use the website to assess disaster resilience and explain the research that underpins the Index. Attendees will receive a guided tour of the website and will have the opportunity to ask questions in a Q&A session. They will also hear about plans to further improve the Index.

The launch will be recorded and made available on the CRC's Hazard Channel for later access, and for attendees to share with their teams so that emergency services, government and community organisations can begin applying the Index to their work. 

The Index will be open to anyone who is interested in understanding the resilience of their local community.

What is the Australian Disaster Resilience Index?

The Index for the first time captures a nationally standardised picture of disaster resilience. Drawing on a comprehensive suite of materials and existing data, the Index has been designed specifically to help communities, governments and emergency services understand the contributors to disaster resilience, so that they can take informed and practical steps to improve the disaster resilience of their local communities before, during and after natural hazards.

The Index measures overall disaster resilience, as well as coping capacity and adaptive capacity, of each statistical area. It proposes five disaster resilience profiles – nationwide collections of communities that share similar resilience strengths and constraints. This provides the right people with an opportunity to address the resilience of a specific area, form alliances with organisations in similar areas and develop targeted improvements to disaster resilience.

Find out more at the event page, or learn more about the research on the project page.

The Australian Disaster Resilience Index website is an outcome of the Australian Natural Disaster Resilience Index project, with the research team comprising of Dr Melissa Parsons, Dr Ian Reeve, Dr James McGregor, A/Prof Graham Marshall, Dr Richard Stayner, Dr Judith McNeill, Dr Peter Hastings, Dr Sonya Glavac and Dr Phil Morley from the University of New England.