Capability - a statement on research priorities for natural hazards emergency management in Australia

Throughout 2015-2017, emergency service agencies around Australia participated in workshops hosted by the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC to consider the major issues in natural hazards emergency management.

This publication on capability summarises the outcomes of one of these workshops and poses questions as a guide for a national research agenda in natural hazard emergency management.

Numerous challenges face the emergency management sector over the coming years, including more frequent and extreme natural disasters, increasing urbanisation of the landscape, greater community expectations and increasingly politicised emergency events. Each is difficult to respond to in its own right; together they pose a complex problem for the community and government.

Australia is a large country with a diverse landscape and each state or territory has a different risk profile and exposure. In the last decade, each jurisdiction has evolved its own capability in accordance with the specific risks each state faces. Capability discussions between the jurisdictions have predominantly focused on cross-border learning rather than developing a national capability framework for interoperability and sharing resources.

Concepts around capability can now include a number of activities under the broad themes of risk and resilience, readiness, response, relief and recovery service delivery. Specialist fields include warnings and communication, workforce planning and coordination, interoperability, predictive services and modelling, relief coordination, community partnerships, and education and research.

Capability as a concept in emergency management will continue to evolve to the environment around it. Notably, the breadth of the capability concept has evolved in every jurisdiction beyond supplying the resources and training to respond to an emergency. As disasters have grown in frequency and intensity, the sector’s understanding of effects and consequence has evolved and the capability concept continues to widen to include consequence and the spectrum of emergency management, before, during and after emergencies.