What if you were told that by 2025 the east coast of Australia will lose hundreds of homes to storm surges, or that in 2030 the country would have a bushfire season more devastating and catastrophic than Black Summer? These are examples of scientifically plausible futures of climate change that fire and emergency services agencies are striving to prepare for.
As part of the rollout of the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC’s Preparing emergency services for operations in a climate-challenged world project findings, key emergency services managers recently met with Natural Hazards Research Australia to workshop their strategies using four imagined futures – called ‘transformative scenarios’.
The workshop, hosted in Brisbane in May, helped Queensland Fire and Emergency Service decision-makers test their long-term strategies and work together to articulate a vision for a preferred future under climate change, using the CRC’s Transformative Scenarios in a Climate-challenged World resources. The resources outline four transformative scenarios to guide discussions, strategic thinking and future planning.
As one part of the QFES Climate Action Plan, in partnership with Natural Hazards Research Australia’s Research Strategy Director Dr John Bates, workshop members considered the impact of the four transformative scenarios on QFES’s Strategy 2030 plans. They used the resources in a wind-tunnelling exercise to help them better understand the driving forces that interact to shape the future in unpredictable and volatile ways.
Matthew Dyer, QFES’s Principal Program Officer, helped organise the workshop and reflected on the ways that these resources can help disaster managers.
“The application of the transformative scenarios proved an engaging method of exploring strategy implications of a climate challenged world beyond 2030,” Matt said.
“It provided early indications of scenarios that may test emergency and disaster management sector strategy.”
The Transformative Scenarios resources – which can be accessed at www.bnhcrc.com.au/climatescenarios – were developed in collaboration with Reos Partners and RMIT University, supported by the AFAC Climate Change group. Researchers worked directly with emergency management leaders (including from QFES) to develop the scenarios based on current climate trends.
Rather than acting as predictive tools, the resources are a package that organisations can use and adapt to suit their own planning needs. This includes emergency management agencies, government departments, community organisations, state-level agencies and other organisations.
For more information about the resources or how to apply them in your organisation, contact Dr John Bates, Research Strategy Director at Natural Hazards Research Australia: john.bates@naturalhazards.com.au.