Backed by the previous Bushfire and Natural Hazard CRC research at the University of New England, with support from agencies and governments around Australia, the Australian Disaster Resilience Index (ADRI) provides the first nationally standardised snapshot of Australian communities’ capacity for disaster resilience. Communities, governments and emergency services can use the ADRI to take informed and practical steps towards improving the disaster resilience of their local communities before, during and after natural hazards occur.
Index access includes (Source UNE):
- 560 user accounts. Noteworthy as users are not required to create an account to access general ADRI information, only more advanced functions like storing searches. This indicates actual usage is much higher. User accounts are created on a regular basis, between three and 12 per month.
- Users represent more than 280 different organisations, consisting of state and territory emergency organisations, various federal and state/territory departments, 16 Australian universities, 97 organisations with an Australian Government URL <.gov.au>, not-for-profit and public good organisations including the Red Cross and St. Vincent de Paul Society, and a number of private and public companies. Several international organisations also created accounts.
- ADRI recorded more than 55,717 unique user sessions in the past three years, with 13,049 unique user sessions in the 2023-2024 financial year.
An Application Programming Interface (API) delivering the ADRI data used was integrated into several other systems by external organisations, resulting in several formal data access agreements. A total of 18 unique API keys have been issued to date, to a mix of emergency service agencies, federaland state and territory government departments, community support services, philanthropic organisations and academic institutions, with most accessed regularly.
Recent use cases where data has been included:
- Australian Government Department of the Treasury’s Measuring What Matters report
- NSW Reconstruction Authority’s NSW Natural Hazards Risk Assessment
- CSIRO and NEMA’s multi-criteria analysis for the Rapid Project Prioritisation for flood resilience in the NSW Northern Rivers
The Centre is working with National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA) to update ADRI to ensure its ongoing value and use.