Published works

This systematic literature review originally aimed to provide detail of the effect of disaster preparedness activities by individuals on their household’s safety and coping during a natural hazard. The aim was presented as:

To present an index of what has been found to be the most effective household/personal preparedness activities across a range of hazards.

However, as the review proceeded, two things indicated to the research team that the focus of the project needed to be reviewed.

Firstly, no articles were found that effectively measured the effect of any single preparedness activity on the safety or coping of people in a natural hazard. This is explained further in the report.

Secondly, the review process uncovered significant numbers of studies that had measured the effect of community engagement techniques.  At this point, the research team decided to add an engagement tools evaluation to the review and present the results of both aspects of the preparedness picture, with this additional overall aim:

To present a review of community engagement techniques and their levels of success.

This report details the process and outcomes of the systematic literature review component of the project.

It documents a systematic literature review that is part of a larger Bushfire and Natural Hazards Co-operative Research Centre project, Mapping Approaches to Community Engagement for Preparedness in Australia.

As a systematic literature review, it uses protocols already employed by disaster social scientists (such as Miller et al., 2017) and is informed by the Campbell Collaboration and similar protocols for these types of documents. The review builds on the work of a number of researchers (Dunlop, McNeill, Boylan, Morrison, & Skinner, 2014a). Dunlop et al. 2014; Heagele 2016; Kohn et al., 2012; Uscher-Pines et al., 2013) to identify most effective and therefore most important preparation activities.   The objectives of the project were to:

1. Collate a list of personal preparedness activities that have been examined for their effect around the world, and these examinations published in English
2. Collate a list of all of the community engagement tools and techniques that have been evaluated around the world and these examinations published in English
3. Review the success or otherwise of these tools in quantifiable terms
4. Emerge from the review with a tool kit for community communication and engagement containing a wide range of tools for a variety of circumstances

Four research questions guided this systematic literature review:

1. What are the most effective household/personal preparedness activities across a range of hazards?
2. What philosophical or engagement frameworks are being used or examined in the literature?
3. What tools are being used to engage communities?
4. What research methods were used to evaluate these tools or programs?

Using a systematically developed set of search terms that focused on preparedness activity , we searched a range of databases and secured 1,331 articles.  In addition, we searched a range of grey literature sites and found a further 120 possibilities. After a search for duplicates, we had a database of 1,451 studies.  Two screening processes were then employed – searches of titles and abstracts, at which point, 1,328 studies were discarded because they were off topic, about recovery, conceptually off track, dealt with human-generated hazards, used descriptive data, or researched agency responses instead of community.

At this point we realised that studies researching the effect of discrete preparedness activities were not emerging and that community engagement techniques were.  Once a decision was made to also consider community engagement techniques, the process was repeated for the same result. The search was effective for both because of the focus on preparedness activity, which is also an effect of good community engagement.  Articles were then read in full to assess eligibility on the same criteria as the previous step, with 82 excluded at this point, leaving 41 articles for review.

The next step was the review the articles with each of the objectives in mind.

Objective 1 was not achieved because of the lack of research undertaken on this topic.

Objective 2 was collation of a list of community engagement tools used and evaluated around the world and this is presented in table form.  The engagement techniques ranged from our own strategic community fire safety programs such as Community Fire Safe and FireGuard, to one off tools such as gaming simulations, exercises and co-design workshops.  It also included information and education tools, some of which were shown to be effective.

Objective 3 related to a review of the success or otherwise of these engagement tools.  Evaluation methods ranged from statistically rigorous pre and post surveys, as well as some attempts at longitudinal studies, to observation of workshop activity.  Because of the systematic review process, research quality has been calculated and reported according to formulae developed for this process. The outcomes and quality are summarised in Tables 5 and 6, but detailed further in the report.

Objective 4 related to emergence of a toolkit of community engagement techniques that is also a deliverable for the wider project.  The toolkit is detailed in raw form in Table 5, and articulated in more detail in Section 3.5.  A toolkit format that sits more comfortably outside the systematic literature review and is more easily used by practitioners has been developed as a deliverable of the larger project and is available on the BNHRC website.

We have made recommendations arising from the limitations that we encountered in undertaking this study.  The key of these limitations was that agencies establish a more systematic process of evaluation, and a more scheduled subsequent sharing of program and technique evaluation results.  As well, agencies have taken the lead on preparedness checklists as an easy mechanism for the community to undertake preparedness.  Academic research has followed, but has overlooked testing the assumptions on which these checklists rest. 

Household preparation techniques are backed by fire science, and building and property codes subsequently based on this science, but personal safety and coping preparation activities have not been tested for efficacy. We recommend from this limitation that the effect of discrete preparedness activities be tested, and we have suggested research techniques that could be used. Thirdly, the studies we reviewed lacked consistency and rigour, making comparisons difficult and context hard to determine.   We believe that industry and academia could collaborate to develop minimum requirements for such research that enables full closure of the community preparedness knowledge loop.