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Dr James Davidson
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Walk the walk: systemic crises need systemic responses |
Early January saw the worst flooding hit the southeast Queensland region since 1974. Within a week of the waters subsiding, Emergency Architects Australia (EAA) had volunteer architects on the ground assisting homeowners with practical advice and guidance in post-flood reconstruction. In relying on a thorough technical report, our assessments were geared towards providing a sense of direction for occupants in wading through not only rebuilding but also the planning process associated with reconstruction, something which the majority of households had never faced previously.
In providing mostly uninsured home owners with a comprehensive technical report, EAA’s flood assessors were not only able to evaluate the material performance of the physical building, but were able to gather additional measurable data which under analysis has proven to be insightful for future flood preparation and mitigation.
In wrapping up the program, over 60 registered architects and 100 students/graduate architects had voluntarily given their time to undertake over 220 in-home flood assessments. Altogether EAA representatives assisted over 1000 families in 34 suburbs in Ipswich and Brisbane. This paper will present the findings and key recommendations arising from working with over 1000 families across 34 suburbs during the post-flood period. EAA's work has the potential to inform future planning processes regarding disaster risk management as well as built environment design in southeast Queensland.
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Mr Ian Krimmer
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The Japanese Tsunami - How the Australian Rescue Team's Media Officer told their story |
The Japanese Tsunami – an emergency services media officer’s perspective.
Superintendent Ian Krimmer AFSM, an Australian firefighter with 36 years experience and currently Media Officer for Fire & Rescue NSW (FRNSW), was deployed in March 2011 to Minami Sanriku in northern Japan as media officer for the Australian Urban Search and Rescue (USAR) team.
Located 180 kilometres from the Fukushima nuclear reactor and in the centre of one of the world’s most watched earthquake and tsunami disasters, thousands are missing and there are growing fears of a toxic cloud. The world’s media have been ordered out, communication systems at Ground Zero are destroyed and rumours are rife. Supt Krimmer coordinated the team’s “credible voice” to both Australian and international media now desperate for information on the crisis unfolding in northern Japan.
This paper provides a unique and first hand insight into the critical role that media experts play in coordinating key messages, rapidly detecting and squashing rumours, prepping frontline spokespeople and defending/promoting government actions.
It discusses the rapidly changing demands of media during the progress of emergencies and how we must never allow the media to set the agenda for rescue operators.
With communication infrastructure destroyed at Ground Zero, there were no mobile phones, no Twitter, no Facebook or emails. There was only limited access to satellite phones. This presentation will demonstrate how live information was still fed from Japan to media outlets using a new FRNSW web based voice dissemination system known as “CHUMBY”.
With pictures, videos and first hand accounts, this presentation will not only give a brief account of Australian rescue operations in Japan, but will describe the critical role of media officers in front line emergency environments and how they may need to protect their organisations and governments from unfounded rumours by establishing media trust and keeping emergency managers constantly one step ahead of the game.
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Dr Nigel Martin
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Emergency Communications and Warning Systems: Determining Critical Capacities and Capabilities in the Australian Context |
The frequent occurrence of emergencies and natural disasters continues to threaten people’s safety and security. Emergency communications and warning systems (ECWS) allow people to make vital decisions and take actions before, during and after the emergency or disaster event. The critical objective of our study was to determine the important capacities and capabilities of ECWS in the Australian context. This study used expert stakeholder analysis in which data collected by the Australian federal government was subjected to structured coding techniques to identify the major ECWS capacities and capabilities raised by emergency and disaster event stakeholders. Sources of data were drawn from individuals, and public and private organizations. The summary of findings were generating by axially collapsing and summarizing the coded stakeholder statements. Findings showed that a broad range of ECWS are deployed in the Australian context. These ECWS capabilities come with social or technological limitations that suggest the importance of an integrated or systems based approach for their construction and deployment. Also, while the identification of critical infrastructure vulnerabilities reinforced the requirement for an integrated systems approach, this also presented further arguments for the building of resilience and redundancy measures into domestic infrastructure networks. In addition, educating and informing users of ECWS was highlighted as a key to successful emergency or disaster response. The results also show that new and innovative ECWS technologies and solutions will enable improved emergency or disaster management in the future. Importantly, this paper simultaneously considers a number of important factors and issues impacting ECWS and provides an informative and expanded discussion on the desired combinative capacities and capabilities as communities construct and deploy future communications systems. |
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Mr Ian Manock
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Examining the resilience of rural communities to flooding emergencies |
This paper aims to examine the resilience of Australian rural communities to the impact of flood emergencies. In the past five years, a number of serious flood events have impacted Australian communities, resulting in death and injury to people as well as devastating loss and damage to property and infrastructure. Many inland rural communities are declining in population whilst the average age of these communities is increasing. This decrease in population and increase in age reduces the service functions within those communities which in turn has an impact on the vulnerability of those communities to the impact of natural disasters such as flooding. This vulnerability relates to not only the potential increase in susceptibility of those communities to flooding, but also the decrease in community resilience.
A study of an Australian rural community susceptible to flooding has been conducted to examine the resilience of that community to flooding and to identify issues relating to community vulnerability i.e. resilience and susceptibility, that exist within that community. From this study we hope to be able to identify community resilience strategies that may help other rural communities better prepare for and respond to the impact of natural disasters, including flood.
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Prof Justin Kenardy
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Children's Psychological Health Following Disasters: Risk and Resilience |
Disasters can and do impact on children. However there is a common belief that children are more resilient and less affected by the psychological stress. In part this is reflected by lower than expected rates of posttraumatic stress disorder. However recent changes to our understanding of posttrauma reactions in children indicate that perhaps children are at greater risk, and that the risk is present for infants and toddlers as well as school aged children and adolescents. In this paper I will explore how the experience of disasters and their aftermath can lead to higher risk, and recovery in children, how these can be ameriorated, and what can be done if the child needs further help. I will also describe a program developed to reduce distress in children through schools. This program was recently trialled across Queensland and also in Christchurch. |
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Dr Joanne Millar
Dr Helen Boon
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Individual and community resilience to natural disasters: a comparison of bushfire and drought events in Victoria |
Australia needs to be prepared for climate change induced natural disasters, which might be rapid or slow onset events. This paper examines individual and community resilience to bushfire and drought events in Victoria. Qualitative research was conducted using focus groups and key informant interviews in 2010. Interviewees were asked about their experiences of each event, including who and what helped them, those most or least affected and whether communities were better prepared for future events. Results show some interesting similarities and differences. The bushfires generated individual and community resilience whereas the drought tested individual resilience but did not appear to build community resilience. Respondents who experienced bushfires spoke of the importance of community support and leadership at critical times. People who coped best with the fires had rural experience and local knowledge, were physically able to take effective action, were supported by family and community, and could talk about their experiences. Those most negatively affected were newcomers, children, the elderly, firefighters and service personnel. In contrast, the drought impacted most heavily on full time farmers, causing prolonged financial and emotional stress. It also affected the wellbeing of town residents, small landholders and the elderly trying to keep gardens and animals fed. Resilient individuals adapted to low water use, accessed counselling and grants, and joined interest groups to share ideas. There is a need to build community networks during times of drought, and to focus on the well being of town residents as well as farmers. In bushfire prone areas, newcomers need to be identified and offered support before, during and after a fire event. |
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Dr Yoko Akama
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Design-led strategies for bushfire preparedness |
To date, both government and fire authorities in Victoria have deployed a wide variety of communication messages on bushfire awareness. Yet, sustaining a view of communication as a transmission process reinforces the power-dynamics that currently exists between the fire authorities and the community. The transmission view of communication sees audiences as passive agents. It is seen as a way to achieve immediate, unimpeded transmission of messages as a form of control of distance and people (Carey 1998). This perpetuates the disempowerment felt by communities who are not engaged in a dialogic process, further broadening the gap between ‘expert’ fire authorities with knowledge and experience of bushfires and the community as ‘non-experts’. Evidence now shows that, despite the effectiveness of distributing information to a wide audience, this method alone is not enough to increase people’s preparedness for bushfire (Robinson 2003). This paper presents vignettes from research project that explored visualisations and creative design-led methods to facilitate a dialogic form of communication on bushfire preparedness with community members in the Southern Otways, a regional coastal town in Victoria. This project engaged a group of 20 residents through a workshop on strengthening awareness, resilience and preparedness for bushfires. Playful Triggers (Akama et al, 2007; Loi 2005) and scenario ‘what if’ cards were used to facilitate co-creation and communication of local knowledge of the geographical environment through visualisation. Through this process, each individual shared their limited knowledge of their neighbours and geographical areas. This in turn opened up assumptions or generalisations, inviting other participants to question what they knew. The process of visualising tacit or informal knowledge made it tangible and concrete. Casual, collective knowledge of others in a bushfire context became substantial, valuable and significant for mitigation and planning. These methods show potential of bridging relationships between neighbours and the importance of social interactions that can lead to better fire preparation.
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Dr David Lie
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The mental health needs of older people exposed to natural disasters |
An understanding of the needs of older adults before and after disasters is increasingly required in all countries due to rapid population ageing. Shortcomings in preparedness for this group were especially brought to light during Hurricane Katrina and a number of new and useful resources have recently been developed tailored to both developed and developing nations.
This presentation summarises the mental health literature relevant to natural disasters regarding and older adults and covers some of the tools and resources that have been developed. Themes include: what happens to older adults? what psychological consequences arise? what is required for response and preparedness for this group?
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Dr Ram Roy
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Shipping Disasters in the Asia-Pacific Region: A Statistical Investigation |
This paper will investigate the reasons behind the various shipping disasters in the Asia-Pacific region and will focus specially on the recent disaster in Tauranga, New Zealand where the recovery operations are still going on. The paper will investigate and analyze the reasons behind the various disasters by using statistical tools and techniques such as ishikawa diagram, pareto chart and FMEA. The objectives will be to identify what went wrong with these ships before/during the disasters, and what could have been done to prevent this from happening in the first place. The paper will finally focus on the current recovery operations in New Zealand where various alternatives will be identified and discussed using a decision tree analysis technique in a stochastic situation to find out the best course of action that could have been taken to salvage the ship and its cargoes at a minimum cost. The paper will also propose some tools and techniques for disaster forecasting and possible preventions in the future.
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A/Prof Axel Bruns
Dr Jean Burgess
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Local and Global Responses to Disaster: #eqnz and the Christchurch Earthquake |
In the morning of 22 Feb. 2011, the city of Christchurch, New Zealand, was hit by a major earthquake, causing widespread destruction and nearly 200 fatalities. Despite significant disruptions to communications, social media played a substantial role in disseminating first-hand information from the affected areas, repeating a pattern observed in several other recent crisis situations (such as Queensland floods in January 2011); further, they were also instrumental in organising the disaster response, as well as providing a space for observers from more or less distant locations around the globe to offer their sympathies and support. On Twitter, such responses were organised around the hashtag #eqnz, which averaged some 100 tweets per minute in the hours following the earthquake.
Building on innovative frameworks for analysing and visualising the tweet data available from Twitter, developed by the authors, this paper will examine the patterns of tweeting activity which can be observed in the aftermath of the earthquake. It will identify the key contributors to the #eqnz network and show the key themes of their messages. Emerging from this analysis, and from the other papers presented in this panel, is a more detailed understanding of Twitter and other social media as key elements in the overall ecology of the media forms used for crisis communication. Such uses point both to the importance of social media as a tool for affected communities to self-organise their disaster response and recovery activities, and as a tool for emergency management services to disseminate key information and receive updates from local communities.
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Ms Gina Mammone
Mrs Lea Symonds
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RESPONSE TO CRISIS – EXPECT THE UNEXPECTED - Why relationships matter? |
When a crisis occurs, well trained teams of emergency service workers are essential to operational effectiveness. But what does “well trained” really encompass?
In this session Gina Mammone, Manager Critical Incident and Counselling Services SES NSW and Lea Symonds, Managing Director Personal Strengths Australia & New Zealand will discuss the innovative approach that NSW SES has taken to build and maintain interpersonal resilience in teams.
Participants will be introduced to activities that utilise the internationally acclaimed relationship tool, the Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI) and hear how this has helped individuals and teams in understanding motivation, behavioural style, expectations mismatches, conflict triggers, personal strengths and overdone strengths in the context of emergency services and response to disasters.
How does this make a difference to individual and team performance? Attend this high energy session and you will find out!
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Ms Ruth Fuller
Prof David Cliff
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Managing Emergencies at Underground Coal Mines |
The Mining Emergency Management System (MEMS) is used and promoted by the Queensland Mines Rescue Service and is the emergency management system of choice for Queensland’s underground coal mines. The MEMS structure is an industry specific variant of the Australian Inter-service Incident Management System (AIIMS). Consequently it is similar to the Coordinated Incident Management System (CIMS) of New Zealand, as both are based on the Incident Command System (ICS) component of the National Inter-agency Incident Management System (NIIMS) from the United States. MEMS was first introduced into Queensland mines in 2005. Since that date, the application of MEMS during the annual Queensland level 1 mine emergency exercises has been observed and assessed. These exercises are realistic emergency simulations staged at the mine. They involve interaction with the mine, both surface and underground, external agencies and other coal mines. These exercises are organised by a confidential committee, external to the chosen host mine, and instigated without any warning, but within a disclosed two week timeframe. Each year the independent assessors make recommendations relating to improving the management of the incident. Unfortunately these recommendations have remained largely the same each year. This indicates some deficiencies in applying MEMS, and has often resulted in non-optimal decision making during the emergency exercises. It is the purpose of this paper to evaluate the merits of implementing such incident management philosophies within the mining context by discussing what does, and does not, work in practice. Lessons learnt from the Level 1 exercises and real-life disasters, such as the Pike River tragedy will be examined. Finally, some suggestions for further study to improve performance and decision making during emergency response at underground coal mines will be provided. |
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Ms Leanne McCormick
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The Core Volunteer |
For both government and community organisations, responsible for coordinating disaster recovery programs, including the direction of significant financial, human and other resources; it is the trained, highly skilled, and committed volunteers that are of critical value.
How are these volunteers obtained, trained, and retained as the backbone of an organisation? How are the requirements of capacity and service delivery maintained through periods of peak activity and those less exciting times?
Given the absence of financial remuneration for volunteers, management strategies can particularly benefit from models derived from the behavioural sciences.
This study has quantitatively tested the level of attitudinal constructs of organisational commitment and a relational psychological contract, as held by volunteers engaged in a large Australian not-for-profit entity. Organisational commitment has been positively associated with a volunteer’s level of satisfaction and contribution to a role, as well as intent to stay. The psychological contract provides a means by which volunteers can define the basis of their relationship with the organisation. A relational contract has been assessed for its mediating effect between predictor variables such as perceived organisational support, job scope, role clarity and socialisation, and outcomes of affective and normative commitment.
Understanding the key predictors and implications of both constructs enables organisations dependent on volunteers to potentially tap a deeper and more enduring level of connection with their individual volunteers. Organisations can better define, understand, and operationalize the promissory expectations and aspects of need satisfaction that are most typical of volunteers and leverage this knowledge to increase the level of want or obligation to stay on the part of their volunteers. |
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Dr Kathy Peri
Mrs Trish Rasmussen
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Moving (heaven) and Earth for Older People Post CHristchurch Earthquakes |
The September and February earthquakes in Christchurch, New Zealand have had a significant impact not only on the infrastructure of our city but also on the health and well-being of vulnerable older people living in both community and residential care dwellings. This presentation describes how Health Care of the Elderly Speciality Services (Canterbury District Health Board) played a critical role in treating and supporting this vulnerable group during the state of emergency and on going recovery phase.
Firstly the role that nurses and members of interdisciplinary health team contributed to the disaster response will be explored. The role of the nurse in this specific disaster depended on the situation and many functions outside their usual scope of practice were often involved. These nurses were in a unique position to participate in all aspects of the disaster response including triage, definitive care and support.
Also included will be some discussion on the lessons learned from our residential care evacuations as well as the function and response to disaster specific respite care services from a nursing perspective, several examples will be given including setting up nurse led respite wards in both aged care facilities and a sub-acute hospital during the state of emergency and recovery phase.
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Mr Peter Rekers
Ms Rebecca Riggs
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The art and science of spokesperson selection |
Why is it that some messages never get through? Why is it that some spokespeople are never heard however decorated their uniforms may be? The selection of the right spokespeople is vital to ensure messages are heard in order to improve public safety, reduce responder efforts and maintain the credibility of the responding agencies.
There is a science to selecting spokespeople based on brain chemistry.
People under extreme stress such as in a disaster or crisis will involuntarily react in unusual ways and understanding what is happening to them is vital in selecting and preparing spokespeople.
Peter Rekers and Rebecca Riggs will present the scientific basis of this method and practical solutions in how response and recovery agencies should apply this methodology topped with a liberal helping of chocolate! Yes chocolate plays a part too!
The presentation will be interactive with demonstrated examples of the methodology.
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Mrs Helen Hickson
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SOCIAL WORKERS’ EXPERIENCES OF WORKING WITH BUSHFIRE AFFECTED FAMILIES. |
In the aftermath of the devastating Victorian bushfires in February 2009, Social Workers engaged with bushfire affected families in a variety of roles. In the early days, Social Workers began arriving from all over Australia to answer the call for help. Now, more than three years later, Social Workers continue to support bushfire affected families. This research explores the experiences of Social Workers who worked in the Bushfire Emergency response and the context in which they practiced. This knowledge can be used to prepare and support Social Workers and other practitioners who will work in disaster or emergency recovery situations in the future. This research is supported by a grant from the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW), and received Ethics approval from La Trobe University. The researcher used mixed methodology including an anonymous on-line survey and personal interviews with six social workers, and Nvivo 8 for narrative data analysis. |
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Mr Tim Morrison
Mr
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Post Flood Data Collection from Tenterfield January 2011 Flood |
The flooding that occurred in Tenterfield, NSW on the 11th of January 2011 is considered to be the largest flood on record for the township. Residents were isolated, significant infrastructure was damaged and floodwaters posed significant hazards. In response to the flooding, the SES (State Emergency Service) commissioned a study to collect data from the flood event for the purpose of improving flood intelligence and emergency planning for future floods.
Flood information and data was collected from three sources; a field survey of flood debris, community consultation and river gauge data. This data will inform the development of gauge height related flood intelligence. Flood debris height and location were recorded at key locations throughout the town, and then processed together with ground surface elevations to create a preliminary event map indicating flood extent and depth. This resulting inundation map was verified by the SES and used to target a community survey to within 50 m of the inundation. Results of the community survey were then used to refine the preliminary flood extent. Rainfall and flow gauge data was then linked to the estimated inundation in order to provide a reference relating the January 2011 flood to other events.
This data will be used to inform SES flood planning and improve SES flood intelligence for the town. It will also include the development of a new Flood Intelligence card, which is a record of historical and modelled flood extents relative to river gauge height. Additional flood data will need to be collected in order to complete the Flood Intelligence Card, however it is expected that the January 2011 flood will mark an upper limit in the historical flood record. Additionally, this data would provide a good source of calibration data for any future modelling within the town and its environs. |
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Ms Heather Clay
Ms Candace Bobier
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The Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service Response to the Christchurch Earthquakes: |
The Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service Response to the Christchurch Earthquakes:
Have we recovered yet?
Heather Clay, Social Worker and Candace Bobier, Research Associate
Canterbury District Health Board, Christchurch, New Zealand
Canterbury, New Zealand was woken up literally and figuratively on September 4th, 2010 at 4:35 am with a magnitude 7.1 earthquake. Rattled, but largely unscathed, we rode out the aftershocks and congratulated ourselves on our resilience, utterly mentally unprepared for the devastation about to be faced on February 22nd. At 12:51 pm that day, our shaky city crumbled; we fell apart and then we pulled together. We met many of our neighbours for the first time. We mucked in and helped out. Liquefaction and designer long drops became the subjects of everyday conversation. We were getting on with it. By May, aggravation was setting is as we emptied our camping toilets and battled munted roads to our new port-o-com offices. Then cue June, a double banger and demoralisation. Would this never end?
Canterbury’s three large earthquakes in Sept 2010, Feb 2011, and June 2011 (a wake up, death and devastation, demoralisation) have been followed by nearly 8000 aftershocks to which we are slowly reaching acclimatisation. We offer a description of the child and adolescent population referred to a publically funded mental health services earthquake pathway by their family doctor and education professionals since July 2011. Delivered alongside existing services, the earthquake response pathway has been designed to enable targeted as needed intervention to young people struggling to cope as a result of the Canterbury earthquakes. We consider how our service wide response has met the anticipated psychological need (or not) and compare our experience to international experience post disaster. Finally, we consider how our experience can inform mental health preparedness, response and recovery in future natural disasters.
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Dr Kithsiri Perera
Prof Ryutaro Tateishi
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Satellite data based semi-real time media contents to support natural disasters mitigation |
Natural disaster mitigation is a collective effort of; forecast, assessment, and encouraging the public participation in mitigation efforts. This study focused on the rarely addressed aspect, “the value of increasing public awareness” in disaster mitigation. The methodology used satellite data and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to produce semi-real time “Media-GIS” contents. When deliver the relevant information to media, maximizing four components of the content; speed, attractiveness, richness, and accuracy, is the key to increase public awareness on the respective disaster. The methodology to produce Media-GIS contents is based on basic fundamentals of GIS, freely available satellite images, and information extracted from Google Earth. Hence contents carry inherent characters of GIS and significantly different from general graphics in media. Also the graphical variables like, size, value, texture, hue, orientation, and shape, were optimized to match with target content users (age group, social group) and medium (print, TV, WEB, mobile), while minimizing the cost. Two cases studies; Brisbane flood disaster occurred in early 2011 and the on-going disastrous flood in Bangkok, are presented in the study. With the news brakes of the disaster, MODIS (250m) satellite data can be extracted in GeoTIFF and KLM (Keyhole Markup Language) formats. It’s also vital to acquire a no-flood image for damage assessment. The KML file was overlayed on Google Earth, to extract more spatial information of the disaster site. Then, in ArcGIS environment, GeoTIFF file can be transferred into Photoshop for production of the graphical image map content. This Photoshop content is suitable to use independently or they can be converted to a KML file in ArcGIS. The resulted KLM file is the GIS media content for TV, WEB, mobile contents, or for print media, which support to increase the public awareness of the disaster. |
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Mr Darryl Clare
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St John Ambulance Australia Response to the 2010 – 2011 Floods and Cyclone Yasi |
The presentation will focus on the delivery of first aid and medical services to the community during large scale emergency events. Topics discussed will include; the importance of forward planning and training to prepare for a large scale emergency, developing and implementing procedures to ensure sufficient equipment and consumables as well as personnel are available to respond to large scale events, coordinating a nation-wide volunteer response, and developing the best practices in volunteer communications.
The lessons learned and challenges faced by St John Ambulance during the 2010 – 2011 floods and Cyclone Yasi will be discussed such as the management of cross border assistance, dealing with a long term campaign as opposed to a short term event, and situational awareness. The presentation will also focus on St John Ambulance's ability to become more adaptive and innovative when managing large scale incidents.
Achievements and highlights from the St John Ambulance Australia's disaster response will be shared including; the delivery of a nationwide response, implementation of a national communications network, deployment of health care professionals from within St John in a crisis to reduce the load on the existing health system, and also provision of a 24 hour response delivering over 8,000 hours of service and 5,300 treatments.
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