Dr Ken Strahan

Completed associate student
About
Dr Ken Strahan

Dr Ken Strahan’s thesis investigated the factors influencing household self-evacuation in two Australian bushfires – the Perth Hills fire in 2014 and the Adelaide Hills fire in 2015. His research explored the factors that influenced householders’ decisions to evacuate, identified factors that predict self-evacuation and established the characteristics of self-evacuators. Ken’s findings showed that environmental and social cues and warnings and householders’ perceptions of the threat, of hazard adjustments and of other stakeholders, influenced self-evacuation decision making. His findings suggest that future research on those who wait and see during a bushfire should take account of their decisional rules of thumb and that design and targeting of Australian bushfire safety policy should better account for self-evacuator characteristics.

Ken led research for the CRC commissioned through the Victorian Government Safer Together program on the application of the archetypes his PhD findings identified. His research is being used by CFA to target their community engagement programs to meet the needs of the seven bushfire evacuation archetypes his research identified – threat deniers, responsibility deniers, dependent evacuators, considered evacuators, worried waverers, community guided and experienced independents – further catering to
the needs of the community and providing them with specific bushfire information to suit their needs. He also was part of a team commissioned directly by the CRC to assess the value of disaster research.

After the 2019/20 Black Summer bushfires, Ken appeared on the ABC podcast Science Friction to explain how people respond to bushfire according to his research.

Ken is the Managing Director of Strahan Research and is currently working on research commissioned through the Department of Environment, Land,
Water and Planning Victoria on fire ecology.

Project leadership

This project was commissioned and funded entirely by the Safer Together Program.

Student project

This thesis was completed in 2017 and investigated the factors influencing household self-evacuation in two Australian bushfires (Perth Hills 2014 and Adelaide Hills 2015). Dr Strahan’s research explored the factors that influenced householders’ decisions to evacuate, identified factors that predict self-evacuation and established the characteristics of self-evacuators. His findings showed that environmental and social cues and warnings and householders’ perceptions of the threat, of hazard adjustments and of other stakeholders, influenced self-evacuation decision making.
Supervisory panel:

Research team

27 Sep 2019
People respond to bushfires in different and complex ways according to their circumstances and...

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