Plenty of action on decision support

October and November this year provided an exciting couple of months for the Decision support system project, filled with end-user workshops across the country. Both the Tasmanian and Greater Melbourne case studies kicked off, each with two full days of interviews with members of various state agencies and departments and a full day workshop. These initial engagements with end-users allow for the models developed to be as tailored as possible to each case study area, hazards and governance arrangements.

The Greater Adelaide case also greatly progressed with a first presentation of the system and an exploration of its uses in assisting state government in long term planning. The initial system development, driven by a workshop in September 2014, has been developed and was presented in October. Positive comments were received both in terms of how the system had progressed in a year and also what to include in terms of new policy assessment indicators, all of which will be fed into an updated version of the system.

The future of Greater Adelaide was also explored discussing the various trends impacting on South Australia and how the future could turn out in terms of the state’s ability to deal with disaster risk. This resulted in five scenarios being developed in a workshop and then modelled in terms of land use and risk. The presentation of these scenarios stimulated discussion between different government department representatives and with the project team offering greater insight into the modelling. The involvement of end-users from day one in the case study has seen the project evolve from its initial concept, but from our perspective, the system and outcomes have been greatly improved from collaboration between research and end-user organisations. End-user Liz Connell from SAFECOM has herself blogged about being involved in this work, and speaks of her transition from initial sceptical to excitement about what the project might deliver. Thanks for your valuable inputs Liz!

There is still work to go on finalising the Adelaide software, and we are looking forward to that as well as getting more deeply involved in the Melbourne and Tasmania cases. The project has also garnered interest from international organisations which we look to further investigating next year. So after a busy 2015, 2016 looks to be another busy but exciting year.