Awareness, education and communication for compound natural hazards

Whether the threat is from the same or different compound hazards, individuals, communities and businesses are expected to be prepared for and respond appropriately to the hazard confronting them. Given these challenges, how can emergency management organisations best engage with communities and ensure important public information is coordinated and consistent?

This project will define and identify the nature of compound disasters, their characteristics, and how a greater frequency of natural hazards may alter vulnerability and exposure, delivering an advanced understanding of current research and global best-practice approaches to community engagement around compound natural hazards and disasters.

It will also contribute to and advance understandings of co-design as a research methodology and consider the role and importance of local communications infrastructure in helping communities mitigate, prepare for, respond to and recover from compound natural hazards.

Based both on desktop research and on-the-ground social research with disaster-affected communities, the work will enable Australia to be positioned as a global leader by developing a framework, co-created with communities, to guide better communication and education on compound natural hazards. 

The research will establish in an Australian context for the first time, a clear understanding of both international best-practice communication, education and awareness in relation to compound natural hazards, and local lived experience of communication needs around such hazards. The key research output of the project - a framework to guide communication with communities - will be a tool co-designed both with communities and potential stakeholders, to ensure it is fit-for-purpose and immediately useful to emergency preparedness, management and recovery agencies, and the communities they serve.