Evaluating and monitoring for impact: developing a framework for risk prevention programs

There is increasing pressure on emergency management agencies due to the changing nature of natural hazard risk, limited resources and the requirement for agencies to work with their communities in resilience building. This is driving the need for emergency management organisations to broaden their focus beyond hazard response and innovate in a wider set of actions. One important gap at the sector level is in understanding which programs are most effective and where best to invest.

Currently there is a lack of a national framework, guidelines or standards for the monitoring and evaluation of programs that reduce natural hazard risk to inform and guide decision makers and practitioners.

Although there are existing monitoring and evaluation frameworks at the state and territory level, there is little consistency across programs or jurisdictions to inform measurement. This creates barriers to understanding:

• the benefits and effectiveness of these programs at an organisational and community level and how to better incorporate and evaluate innovation
• the return on investment of these programs and ways to plan and implement strategic investment at the state, territory and national scale.

The aim of this project is to:

• develop a framework to guide agencies and practitioners to better measure and manage their risk prevention programs at the community scale
• develop a shared understanding across the sector of the different types of risk reduction programs, their application in different contexts
• develop a more consistent approach to measuring these programs and their benefits
• provide a basis for the future development of national monitoring and evaluation standards.

This project is assessing existing organisational risk reduction programs and the measurement system in place, by exploring evaluation methods in use, measurement studies in the formal literature, a community survey, and two contrasting in-depth case studies.