Eleven new research projects are set for further development after being successfully approved. The new projects, which cover a variety of scientific disciplines and natural hazards, are based on project concepts submitted in April 2023 from Natural Hazards Research Australia’s network of Participants[1].
The projects were approved by the Centre’s Board in May, with this process ensuring that the Centre funds research that will strengthen natural hazard resilience and disaster risk reduction across Australia, based directly on Participant organisational needs.
The following projects are at different stages of development and finalisation, with some to have an open Expression of Interest for research teams to be released in the next few months:
- Lived experiences of First Nations emergency and land management and resilience personnel will improve our understanding of the causes of cultural conflict and load for First Nations staff and volunteers within emergency management and disaster resilience organisations.
- Disaster resilience in Indigenous communities will support Indigenous communities to strengthen their resilience while creating lasting change in the structures, institutions and processes of emergency management and disaster resilience.
- Adaptation for heatwave resilience will explore the efficacy, reach and impact of the national heatwave service which includes Bureau of Meteorology decision support and warning products and agency heatwave warnings; increase understanding of the impact of extreme heat and poor air quality on health service outcomes across Australia; explore the full impacts and costs of extreme heat; and explore building codes and adaptive building design.
- Best practice for tracking potentially traumatic event exposure will complete an environmental scan and comparative analysis of what different platforms and systems offer to track cumulative trauma across emergency management agencies.
- Understanding intangible flood costs and impacts will provide robust evidence, and a methodology that could be consistently applied, for the incorporation of intangible damages into economic assessment of floods (and potentially other natural hazards).
- Communicating flood risk will improve communication of flood risk to people in at risk areas, including expected intensity and conditions, insurance information, improved flood risk messaging (such as language, ratings, terminology etc), messaging suitability and social acceptance, and implementation of changes into planning frameworks, community messaging and warning systems.
- Effectiveness of land-use planning flooding controls during 2020–22 floods will develop a baseline understanding of the implementation of planning flood controls to new buildings and modifications across different states in Australia over the last 10 years, to assist in refining flood planning systems and processes.
- Utilisation of transformative scenarios in a climate-challenged world will translate and utilise the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC’s 'Transformative scenarios in a climate challenged world’ resources with the development of professional development modules and user-friendly, train-the-trainer applications.
- Effect of cultural burning on soil health will expand a successful pilot study (undertaken on the New South Wales south coast) that assessed changes in the physical and chemical properties of soil following Western hazard reduction burning and cultural burning and found that cultural burning resulted in more positive outcomes for soil health.
- Wi-fi captive portal videos for tourism disaster preparedness will empirically evaluate the effectiveness of using wi-fi captive portal videos to prepare tourists and tourism workers for disasters. This project was proposed by Fire and Rescue NSW and is the development of the 2022 Disaster Challenge winning research pitch.
- Fight Fire Fascination program evaluation will empirically evaluate the effectiveness and impact of the Fight Fire Fascination program in Queensland, including assessing the efficacy of the program against objectives, content, delivery and training, as well as determining the impact of the program on fire play and other behaviours.
Representatives from the Centre’s Participants can submit new project concepts for consideration in the October 2023 assessment period. Read the conditions and submit here by 8 August 2023.
[1] A Participant is an organisation or entity (or representative thereof) that has been contracted through a Participant Agreement with the Centre.