Published works

This paper describes the framework development for the project “Mapping and understanding bushfire and natural hazard vulnerability and risks at the institutional scale” being undertaken for the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Co-operative Research Centre (BNHCRC). The project is taking a values at risk approach to natural hazard vulnerability by mapping a wide variety of values within an economic geography. Risk ownership of assets at risk and delegated strategic risk management will then be allocated at the institutional scale, providing an insight into existing levels of risk governance for the broad range of values at risk. Aspects of strategic risk management within the project scope concerns natural hazard risk reduction before and after events, taking into account resilience, preparedness, mitigation and recovery.

The systemic nature of natural hazard risk requires building the standard risk assessment process into a broader framework that assess interactions at the institutional scale. This role is filled by the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework (IAD). The framework operates at a polycentric (multiple scale) and heterodox (multiple economic methodology) scale, and is suited to the analysis of common pool resources, which are subtractable, and where limiting access is non-trivial. The capacity to manage natural disaster risk arguably qualifies as a common pool resource, notwithstanding the open-ended nature of current government financing arrangement for disaster recovery.

Key features of the framework include:

• The major institutions affected by natural hazard risk, including local, state and federal government, the community and business and industry, along with specialised institutions such as the emergency management sector.
• Multiple values covering monetary, social and environmental values ranging from tangible to intangible values, and covering five value clusters: built, social and environmental assets, and the goods and services produced from those assets.
• The understanding of risk ownership through the owner of the resource (assets, goods or services) at risk and the delegated risk manager, at the institutional scale.
• The crossing of institutional domains, as risks propagate from where the event occurs to where the risk needs to be responded and managed, using risk ownership as a vehicle.
• The assessment of how ownership is designated, understood and exercised as a proxy for risk governance.