Assessing the value of disaster research

By Ken Strahan, Adriana Keating and John Handmer

Report: The value of disasters research: a review of the literature

In a world of financial and resource constraints, getting research funding is extremely difficult even where there is strong ongoing individual and community self-interest, such as in health or disasters research.

Governments, agencies and philanthropists expect rapid, tangible and useful results from research that clearly justify their investment decisions. But research doesn’t generally work that way. Although research often has important impacts on the economy, culture, health, the environment, national security or even human well-being, these effects are often only felt in the medium and long-term, and in many cases are not easily attributable to the research work that was done years before.

The value of research often travels along circuitous routes generating knowledge, building capacity, creating networks of collaboration and influencing public policy and programs. Much of the value produced might not be easily valued in the marketplace nor easily measured.

Frameworks to assess research value are designed to comprehensively capture and systematise the complexity of economic, social and academic factors that contribute to short, medium and long-term outcomes. They are conceptualised to facilitate identification, measurement and quantification of value from research processes, for example the Research Contribution Framework, and outcomes (the Payback Framework and its derivatives). Some such as the Health Solutions (AIHS) Impact framework emphasise the inter-relatedness of both process and outcomes.

When it comes to measuring the impact of disasters research, the framework developed by Cruz Rivera et al. (2017) is promising because it captures the diversity of research impacts. We have adapted this framework for use in the natural hazards and bushfire research arena. It tracks primary research related impacts in the short-term including research and innovation, dissemination and knowledge transfer and capacity building, training and leadership. In the medium-term the framework highlights academic collaboration, research networks, data sharing and influence on policy-making. It also tracks emergency management and emergency management system improvements including through evidence-based practice, improved quality of service and service delivery, cost containment and effectiveness, resource allocation and workforce improvement.

The framework includes long-term emergency management and societal impacts through greater risk and emergency management knowledge and literacy, attitudes and behaviour change within the community; and improved social equity, inclusion and cohesion. In the long-term, broader economic impacts are also achieved through research and development, intellectual property, products brought to market, spin-off companies and research contracts and income from external sources. 

Considerable high-quality disaster and emergency management research is produced in Australia, but we are challenged to demonstrate its value without a systematic and credible framework for capturing the diversity of factors that contribute. This paper presents a way forward which we believe to be a robust and credible approach that should be acceptable to stakeholders within the disaster research domain.