Rowena Richardson

This project sought to optimise the use of earth observing systems for active fire monitoring by exploring issues of scale, accuracy and reliability, and to improve the mapping and estimation of post-fire severity and fuel change through empirical remote sensing observations. A particular focus was on the analysis of data obtained from Himawari-8, which is able to provide updated imagery on a 10 minute basis.+++++

Over three years, the project focused on the nature of catastrophic disasters and how they are conceptualised in the Australian context; the historical frequency of compound disasters in Australia; the most appropriate practices to plan and prepare for catastrophic disasters; and how businesses and community organisations can best be incorporated into planning and preparedness arrangements for catastrophic disasters. The key finding from this research is that existing principles for disaster planning and risk reduction are not effectively implemented to develop plans that consistently inform decision making. To improve this, a key utilisation output from the research has been an emergency management capability maturity assessment tool that can be utilised by governments and organisations to better understand potential capability gaps in the context of severe-to-catastrophic disaster scenarios. Outcomes of the research were presented as evidence to the Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements.