Eight projects covering First Nations engagement and storytelling, building resilience and heatwave safety have been approved for further development by Natural Hazards Research Australia (the Centre).
These projects were the successful concepts submitted by the Centre’s network of Participants in September 2024, continuing the Centre’s commitment to research that not only strengthens natural hazard resilience and disaster risk reduction, but is useful, useable and used.
Approved project concepts currently being developed into Expressions of Interest include:
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A national framework and toolkit for multiculturalism inclusion in emergencies will strengthen resilience and improve outcomes for multicultural communities during disasters. The project will identify the challenges and needs of multicultural communities, as well as provide a framework and toolkit for implementation by the Australian emergency management sector.
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Managing the risk of heat stress for first responders: understanding the role of diverse heat sources and environment will improve understanding of the multifaceted nature of heat stress experienced by first responders. The project will empower stakeholders with comprehensive knowledge to mitigate the risks associated with heat stress.
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Remote sensing of grass condition will develop a national satellite-derived model detecting changes in grass fuel conditions in crops and pastures to improve understanding of their relationship. The project will help agencies’ fire danger ratings and warning message communications.
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Multi-hazard resilient buildings will investigate current multi-hazard building standards and guidance, as well as identify research gaps to help create best-practice building outcomes, elements and testing.
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First Nations women, cultural fire knowledge, wellbeing and memory will address the way gathering and sharing cultural burning knowledge impacts First Nations women, as well as exploring its culturally protective factors in building disaster resilience.
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Unlocking risk: enhancing hazard risk assessment through historical archival reanalysis will enhance the characterisation of historical hazard events and improve data accessibility for hazard researchers, emergency managers and the public. The project will also improve the use of Fire Nations knowledge to enhance modern archives of historical events.
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Understanding the effectiveness of current communication mediums and messaging used to communicate information on planning, preparing/responding and recovering from an emergency event to remote First Nations communities will provide evidence-based data to inform fit-for-purpose future communication strategies and messaging in a remote First Nations community context to enhance safety and resilience.
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Quantifying and predicting bushfire risk following large-scale, drought-induced vegetation die-off will quantify the fuel characteristics of a range of vegetation types affected by vegetation die-off across southwestern Australia to calculate potential fire behaviour.
A new concept round is open to Centre Participants from 20 January 2024 until 5:00pm AEDT 28 February 2024. Learn more about submitting a project idea and key dates here.